Huawei is giving up the US market | Hacker News Reader

Huawei is giving up the US market

arstechnica.com

43 pointsrogerbraun57 comments

  Huawei has recently focused on Europe, where it doubled its workforce.

In related news: Huawei's Zurich offices where raided yesterday and nine people where arrested.

Allegedly they have flouted labor - and immigration laws. As in getting Chinese employees into Switzerland on tourist visas and flouting other immigration related and labor laws (missing work permits and such).

Source?

In German :

http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/unternehmen-und-konju...

http://www.ictjournal.ch/fr-CH/News/2013/04/25/Huawei-Suisse... (French)

Fcuk the source!

It's true for most Asian companies and I myself have worked for one; have done that, been there. There was a time(many years ago when I was a fresher in that company and was sent on site) I used to to hear NOO, YOOO NOO GO HOME. YOO DO WORK. FOOD NO. WORK FIRST THEN GO HOTEL FOR FOOD. WHAT TIRED? MY ENGINEERS WORK 48 HOUR IN A LINE AND NO TIRED and just the sight of any person with tiny eyes, little nose and yellowish/whitish pale colour[1] made me feel like I should scheme to strangulate him/her somehow.

What I was shocked to see that my manager was not alone. Almost(I could've avoided this word) everybody in the company was a workaholic. Felt like they were born this way and expected us to be the same. Though work on travel visa is one thing, work (backbreaking work) on business visa is such a standard procedure that nobody gives a damn anymore!

[1] I am deeply sorry to write this and ashamed to admit this but this was how I felt. It's true!

I have heard of the stories of an army of huawei engineers being sent on site and working non stop, packed 20 in a hotel room. Do you think this gives them a huge competitive advantage

This is just an outright racist rant... I don't even see the point you are making...

Most Asian companies... Just from your experience with one.

You seem to just be a bigot. :(

It's a racist rant, but Huawei is just the incarnation of all the negative Chinese stereotypes. One of my buddies does a lot of business with them, and they're awful to deal with, shady in dealings, try to get out of paying whenever possible, etc.

Business culture is not uniform throughout the world, and business culture in Asia (ex-Japan, maybe ex-Korea) and the Middle East is generally not as polished and civilized as business culture in the West.

They are different cultures, it's not about polish. They think differently, thus they act differently.

You are talking like the British/Romans spoke of themselves in the empire days... We are a bit past that now. No one needs your civilisation or your manners... They might need your money though. ;)

First, some things are objective. Try being a woman working for Middle Eastern business-people and say it's "just culture."

Second, Rome won in the end. The people that conquered them ultimately took on their culture. So it will be with Anglo-American culture. Even if in the future India and China are dominant, their culture will come to resemble ours. Indeed, that phenomenon has already been happening in India for 200+ years via British colonization.

You speak of culture like it's some sort of sports competition. Curious mindset.

I think our culture is objectively better in many ways, and that it's better for humanity for others to adopt it. Not just so "we win."

"...I think our culture is objectively better in many ways..."

The problem is...

everyone else ALSO thinks THEIR culture is "objectively better".

That's not true. Many people in Asia and the Middle East want their countries to adopt the objectively better parts of Western culture. India is particularly pro-active in that regard.

No!

They just want to be developed but in their own way. You really have no idea about what is culture or in what way cultures of countries like India(my country) are shaping, do do you?

I'm Bengali, so I do have an idea. People on the sub-continent want to develop in their own way, but they generally have a deep respect for Western culture and a desire to adopt elements of it. India has already adopted huge amounts of British culture.

Yes...

But many in the West want the West to adopt the "objectively better" parts of Muslim, or Japanese culture.

Every one of them...

like you...

think they know best what to do on the behalf of others.

I am an Asian and I don't think I'm an anti-Asian or a racist for that matter. It was a rant for sure and frustration more. But not at all racist. You read just anything and judge it too!

Huawei bans Indians in India:

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-05-06/telec...

India bans Huawei and ZTE from sensitive government projects:

http://paritynews.com/government/item/571-india-bars-zte-hua...

I figured that eventually people were going to just start saying "screw it, the US is just too hard" for commerce, travel, and expatriate employment.

This is the country where a Russian got arrested for thought crime when he entered the country to give a speech at a conference for a product he produced in his own country according to its laws(1). I'm surprised its taken this long.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._ElcomSoft_and_...

My experience is the contrary: I have experience with customers from 30 different countries and, in general, dealing with US customers is the best experience in the business sense. I am working with long term contracts on Fortune 100 companies and small size companies too.

The main factor is the search for a win/win goal and the focus in value.

The Huawei case is much more specific. It is a chinese company selling security products. A bad match for US. I sell security related products to the main security vendors in US without any issue, and top security companies like Core Security sells to US Government Agencies even when they were founded in Argentina (obviously now established in US)

You didnt read the wiki link above before commenting?

Yes. I read it.

The DMCA is bad. We US'ians have known that since its inception. What would be worse is if companies succeeded at implementing DRM without any help from the government.

What's wrong? Stop laughing! Too many things wrong in that sentence?

I already think twice about traveling to the US.

I'm not going to defend that ridiculous case, but it wasn't 'thought crime'. He was arrested for breaking the DMCA, and I like to hope thought crime isn't illegal in America yet. Can I ask why you chose that wording?

Yeah, no company can make money in the US..

I think this is a real shame. Huawei makes the best combo of cheap/quality Android phones I've been able to get my hands on. I use the low-end ones in hacking projects almost every day.

Huawai isn't going anywhere, and this article also neglected to mention how popular the IDEOS is in Africa. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/111540-android-phone-huawei-...

Huawei has repudiated such plans:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertolsen/2013/04/25/chinas-hu...

This should've been the headline.

Incase anyone here is unfamiliar Huawei makes more then handsets. They also produce an eNodeB. There are legitimate potential security concerns there.

well not even eNodeB's they also do all component of EPC core as well...

What are those concerns exactly? Does Chinese hardware to prime factorisation faster than others?

Generally speaking its a bad idea to outsource "critical infrastructure", and that seems doubly true for a software product. Imagine if the chinese government had an office set up in the Huawei office, and "conspired" to inject a backdoor into their base stations. There's the potential to completely commandeer our cellular network or worse to silently use it as a method to ease drop on conversations from government or business executives. According to news reports, these fears aren't as farfetched as they sound either.

Huawei would have to defeat the general notion that Americans have that anything made in China is a cheap piece of crap. Americans don't realize that everything is made in China, even though all their products say so. Most Americans think Made In America means quality and are blinded to the fact that other countries have other brands and different ways to live. Huawei would have been screwed in America, it just sounds like a brand that would be selling electronics at the Dollar General.

I disagree- I think Huawei would have to defeat the notion that their products have a backdoor that allows the Chinese government to directly access them and spy on/ attack the US. I think the stigma of made in china being cheap or second rate is largely gone now and replaced with the fear of china is gunning for us.

They even offered their source code for the government for review, but Australian govt refused. They clearly mean business, and not spying.

http://www.cso.com.au/article/440054/huawei_offers_australia...

You need to read Ken Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust: http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

Merely having the source available for review is hardly a guarantee of safety, without a way to verify that what's embedded in the ROM and microcode is identical. And why should Australia pay to make this verification when it would bump the TCO higher than competing kit?

Source for huaweis bid being more expensive?

There are ways to verify, surely, checksum builds/roms etc.

I'm not talking about Huawei's bid being more expensive.

I'm talking about the cost of hiring Australian-certified source code auditors, developers of software to be used to certify Huawei kit, ongoing re-certification of Huawei firmware updates, the time spent by regulators even worrying about this on an ongoing basis, etc., etc.

It all adds up to the total cost of ownership (TCO). So I feel sorry for Huawei but if people are truly worried about the Communist Party of China forcing them to sell pre-hacked kit then it's going to be a rough slog for them. Trust is easy to lose but hard to regain.

Eg, the problem of hardware backdooring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRxDvkKBMTc

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/133773-rakshasa-the-har...

I think the stigma of made in china being cheap or second rate is largely gone now

Do you actually live in America, or are you just speculating? That's an absurd statement for someone who actually lives in the US.

Not really. I live in Houston, Tx. I cant say that aside from intentionally cheap things like disposible electronics or guitars, no real stigma exists from the people I associate with. I think that the nationalism surrounding all manufacturing leaving the US may upset people but I dont think that people find chinese goods "inferior" to anything...

Okay - quick test: would you feed your children (if you have them) food that was imported from China? Your average American citizen would say, "WTH is wrong with you? Of course not!"

Or how about this if you don't have kids: "Would you drive yourself across country in a Chinese made car with no other means for acquiring another car if there are severe problems with said car along the way?"

If you said, "Sure!", then I just really have no other choice to believe that you either have some bias, very little world/life experience (teenager, younger 20-something), a counter-bias against what you perceive as a bias, or an agenda going on. If you were of Chinese descent, for example, you might have an agenda/bias that would explain such a statement. If you were an idealistic teenager, you might be rebelling against the unfairness of the world with such a statement. If you were of Asian descent and felt some need to "protect" Asian heritage/reputations in America, you'd make such a statement. Any adult who has spent more than 10 years continuous time in the USA in the past 40 years just would not have such an opinion.

I'm sorry but I think you're totally off base. And I do think a lot of Chinese goods are crap. What's the pinnacle of Chinese goods? Smartphones and gaming consoles? Two categories of goods known for their much-higher-than-average failure rates? I think you're just blind to the kinds of goods that Americans make since we tend to let the cheap and easy crap get produced abroad.

> Americans don't realize that everything is made in China, even though all their products say so

No, most people like you don't realize that China only accounts for a tiny fraction of consumer spending.

Did you know that Americans spend ~88.5% of their personal consumption expenditures on goods made in America and about 2.7% on goods made in China? [1]

Americans spend 32X more on goods made in America than they do on goods made in China.

Maybe stop shopping at Wal-Mart and buying crappy goods that will find their way to a landfill in under a year, and you'll stop seeing "made in china" everywhere. You'd be surprised what a little more money will buy you -- there's a lot of great, durable stuff out there that generally doesn't come from Wal-Mart or say "Made in China"

[1] http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el20...

>Most Americans think Made In America means quality and are blinded to the fact that other countries have other brands and different ways to live.

Did you know that most Chinese also agree that Made in America is a symbol of quality? One survey found that while 80% of Americans believe made in America means higher quality, some 60% of Chinese surveyed agreed with that.[2]

Also, the insinuation that Americans don't realize that brands from other countries are good is a myopic, insulting joke. Yeah, we don't buy and love South Korean electronics, Japanese cars, French and Italian wines and cheeses, etc etc etc and on and on and on. Imported quality goods have always fetched a premium in American hearts. Low-quality Wal-Mart level goods earn the disdain they deserve.

[2]http://www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-...

>Huawei would have been screwed in America, it just sounds like a brand that would be selling electronics at the Dollar General.

Americans used to think Japanese goods were total crap. Not many Americans wanted a "Honda" or "Toyota" car in the 70's or 80's. Japan turned their brands around and fought for respect -- and won it.

Then, as recently as a decade ago Americans largely dismissed South Korean goods. A Hyundai car? What a joke! Everyone knows South Korean goods are crap.

Except, South Korean brands fought for and won American loyalty through good products and good service.

Chinese brands could totally follow the same well trod path that brands from other East Asian countries have followed, and there is no reason to believe they would fail.

I think that almost literally 50% of the cars in the 20-space parking lot where I live near DC (including my own) have a Hyundai badge.

The turnaround in both perception of quality and actual quality has been amazing.

Apple manufacture in china.

Samsung manufacture in china.

Designed in California doesn't mean made in America.

BYD in my mind would be the one of the pinnacles of Chinese goods, but they only sell locally. As far as I know

I do not consider a lot of Apple or Samsung goods to be of high quality. Especially the small cheap goods like smartphones -- I've owned phones from both now and both are disappointing in terms of long term reliability. The Samsung especially I do not expect to last long, and the Apple phone was barely usable at three years old.

Of the goods of theirs that I've had luck with, expensive laptops and televisions -- critical components like LCD's are not made in China, and the processes to create Macbooks are very automated and said processes are designed to deliver quality for that product line alone.

Remember, low-quality cheap Dell laptops and RCA/WalMart TV's are also made in China.

For every iPad/Nex7 that comes out of China, how many <$100 WalGreens bargain bin Android tablets running 2.X come out?

Hard to say if it is protectionism or there are legitimate concerns. Most smartphones and computers manufactured by companies like Apple, Dell, Lenovo have their factories in China. What's the guarantee that those devices are free from hardware hacking? The hardware is so complex nowadays that it is near impossible to detect if you have a chip or a circuit to do something malicious. For more, the Scientific American article on hardware hacking here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-hacker-...

*read the

There is a lot of insider talk in the telecom industry about Huawei being complicit in hacking of various competitors, including Nortel (who were hacked and for four years did not close the security hole)

Wait, how exactly were they legally barred from setting up shop here? Is it because they were cited as supporting Chinese espionage or whatever not too long ago?

Their products are currently banned from being used in government contracts. And that is as in no Federal government data can transverse their devices. There are a lot of companies involved in these contracts (think, office supplies, vehicles, weapons, computers) and they would rather not be on the wrong side of a government investigation. Can't have an office if you won't have any customers.

They were cited for selling equipment to Iran, then destroying the evidence when called out on it.

An interesting guess: What if one day the government of China bans Apple, Android, Windows, Cisco, IBM and other USA brands for political or backdoor concerns?

Yay to my 60 euros, 5 days battery life, android 2.2 huawei phone !

Thanks china ! Because who really believes you can have everybody have their ferrari...

Time for the cold cyberwar between the US and China

Huawei's chairwoman, Sun Yafang, worked for Chinese intelligence before joining Huawei.

Source(s):

http://jeffreycarr.blogspot.com/2011/10/huaweis-chairwoman-w...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fSL5mPB_18Q/TphTDDqd2OI/AAAAAAAAAI...

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/11/chinese-tele...

http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/osc/huawei.pdf

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