Does China Have a Big Brand?
Yesterday I listened to a podcast that talked about big global brands and the commentator insisted that China does not have a big brand. If you stop for a minute and have a think about some of the biggest brands in the world and which countries they come from, which brands come to mind?
The USA dominants most of the giant brands that I could think of. My list: Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds and so on.
If we look at Japan and I can think of Sony, Toyota, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.
So what about China?
China is the world's second largest consumer economy after the U.S. Big brands; Lenovo Computer distributor. Baidu search engine; Alibaba Social media; Tencent (owners of WeChat and other gamer apps) are brands with multi billion dollar estimated values. But one company is a real competitor to the big U.S. brands.
Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment and services company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong. They have over 170,000 employees. Their revenue in 2015 was US$60 billion. Its products and services have been deployed in more than 140 countries and it currently serves 45 of the world's 50 largest telecoms operators. In 2007 they formed a joint venture company with Symantec with 51% ownership and in 2012 they bought the rest of Symantec's 49% share holding.
Impressive numbers. So let's compare the numbers with Microsoft. Microsoft's revenue 2016 was US$85 billion, they have 114,000 employees. So I think it would be fair to say that Huawei is a big global player.
I've been lucky enough to have visited China on a few occasions and in 2014 Spark New Zealand in conjunction with Atlas Gentech hosted a group of CIO's from all over New Zealand to visit China's successful Huawei development plants.
Our visit to the Huawei research & development facility in Shenzhen was incredible. The Chinese are amazing hosts and they really looked after us. Their process and standards within their manufacturing facilities are leading edge. The products that are coming in the future will be game changes. 5G was well underway and this was in June 2014.
China is already on the world stage with their innovations and they will continue to compete, and win, on the global playing field, especially in the telecommunications & technology sector. My advice to my daughter attending high school, "Learn to speak Mandarin". Opportunities to work with Chinese companies in mainland China and off-shore will continue to grow. She's off to a great start. 谢谢 xiè xie nǐ
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