Huawei’s Ren Zhengfei says he hopes budget smartphone brand Honor will surpass its former parent company
- ‘We are competitors in the future’, Ren Zhengfei says at the farewell party for Honor, the budget smartphone brand he founded
- Honor faces ‘problems bigger than any other new companies’ according to the Chinese founder
“Be the strongest competitor of Huawei in the world, surpass Huawei, and even use defeating Huawei as your motivation,” Ren said at a farewell party for Honor, according to a transcript released on Huawei’s official employee community platform, Xinsheng Shequ, on Thursday. “We are competitors in the future.”
Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker and China’s biggest smartphone vendor, announced the sale of all Honor assets to Shenzhen Zhixin New Information Technology, a consortium of over 30 agents and dealers, in a statement on November 17.
The deal came after the US imposed tighter restrictions on Huawei in May this year, restricting its access to Huawei’s acquisition of chips made with American software and technology, even from companies outside the US.
Comparing the sale to “divorce”, Ren said Honor will be divested completely in compliance to international rules. “Once ‘divorced’, we should not be connected any more. We are adults. We should handle things separately, strictly follow compliance management, strictly abide by international rules and each achieve our own goals.”
Explaining Honor’s sale, Ren said US sanctions against Huawei threatened millions of jobs as well as supplies from Huawei’s dealers and agents from 170 countries.
