Huawei Introduces Six New Products to Boost Growth in the Cloud Market

On Sunday, Chinese telecommunications company Huawei introduced six "innovative and revolutionary" cloud products and services to attract more developers and build its ecosystem, demonstrating ambition in the cloud market that is less reliant on chips, while it is still lagging behind Alibaba and Amazon.

Huawei Cloud CCE Turbo cloud container cluster, CloudIDE intelligent programming assistant, GaussDB (for openGauss) database, Trusted Intelligent Computing Service (TICS), Pangu Model, and infrastructure software for diversified computing are among the six products that will "deliver new standards of efficiency and quality to help developers push new frontiers," according to the company.

The new products were unveiled at Shenzhen's Huawei Developer Conference (HDC.Cloud) 2021. The three-day exhibition will include the most latest events in cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and open source.

Huawei has announced a $220 million investment in its Huawei Developer Program 2.0 this year, which will aid in the ongoing development of an ecosystem around Huawei Cloud, Kunpeng, and Ascend.

"By 2025, every organization on the planet will be using cloud technology. The cloud is the ICT industry's future and the basis for enterprises' digital transformation. Developers are the industry's backbone "In a keynote speech at the event, Richard Yu Chengdong, executive director of Huawei and CEO of the cloud BU and consumer business group, said.

Yu stated that Huawei will continue to share its technological innovation expertise and collaborate with developers and partners to boost enterprise cloud-based and intelligent transformation.

The latest move in the cloud sector comes as the company struggles to cope with the effects of US sanctions, which have pushed it to move away from US-origin technology and goods like chips to focus more on software and services.

"From selling cars to a broader push into the cloud business, the effort is a representation of Huawei's eagerness to counter the declines in its cell phone business," Jiang Junmu, an industry analyst and close follower of Huawei, said on Sunday in the Global Times.

"It's also been laying out more businesses, from cloud to vehicles to smart home appliances, to see if it can better counter revenue losses from the hardware sectors," Jiang said.

Huawei's cloud business is rapidly expanding. According to Canalys, Huawei's cloud sales have increased 168% year on year in 2020.

However, it faces tough competition from domestic rivals such as Alibaba and Tencent, as well as global giants such as Amazon.

With a 17.4-percent market share in the fourth quarter of 2020, Huawei Cloud became China's second-largest player. With a 40% market share, Alibaba was the largest cloud services, provider. According to Canalys, Tencent Cloud was third with a 15% market share.

"As compared to its industry rivals, Huawei has benefits, such as synergy with our hardware offerings and experience working with government and corporate customers," said Zhang Ping'an, president of consumer business cloud services, to the Global Times on Sunday.