Huawei focuses on 5G technology development in China and Japan instead of US

Huawei’s CEO-in-rotation Ken Hu said in a forum on Thursday that the company focused on China and Japan for the development of 5G technology. However, Hu said that the company has no development plans for the US market.

“For our 5G strategy, we currently focus on markets like China and Japan among others. In the US right now, we’re not making significant progress and we don’t have big plans for that market,” he said through an interpreter at a media conference, according to Business Insider.

“For the US, our focus right now is to drive the sales of our smart devices. We just recently launched our brand new phone and it was pretty well received by that market,” Hu said.

In 2012, Huawei was prohibited by US to bid for government contracts due to fears for national security. However, there was no evidence that company eavesdropped on behalf of Beijing. The company also released a statement about the prohibition.

Australia banned the company in 2012 from bidding for contracts in Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) due to fears for national security. Although there was no evidence, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott had no intention of lifting the previous government's block on the company.

"The decision of the previous government not to permit Huawei to tender for the NBN was made on advice from the national security agencies. That decision was supported by the then opposition after we received our own briefings from those agencies," Attorney-General George Brandis told Reuters.

The UK government also questioned the potential security implications of allowing the Chinese company access, including Huawei, to critical networks. However, in March 2015, the UK government confirmed that the company poses no threat to Britain's national security. Since the confirmation from UK, Huawei appeared to work closely with Australia's Coalition MPs.

In November 2016, Optus and Huawei successfully completed the 5G technology trial in Australia. The company claimed that the trial has beaten Telstra and Vodafone as it demonstrated the fastest speeds of a single user transmission over the technology. The companies used millimetre wave frequencies in the 73 GHz band to conduct a single-user transmission speed of 35 gigabits per second.

Read more: Optus and Huawei beat Telstra and Vodafone 5G trial in Australia

Hu also said in the forum that the era is moving from information age era to an artificial intelligence era, with 4G enabling people-to-people communication. However, he said that 5G will enable machines to come alive with features including the ability to send large amounts of data in fast speeds and smooth 4K video streaming.