3 ms·

Huawei stole its telecom tech from Nortel. I wouldn't call them innovative, more like great at industrial espionage.

• vasac 4y ago
  That has been debunked on a HN a few times already.
• adrian_b 4y ago
  I do not doubt that Huawei would not have hesitated to steal from Nortel, given an opportunity, but everything that I have read about the alleged theft from Nortel did not seem to indicate that Nortel really had something valuable to be stolen and there is little doubt that Nortel's doom was caused by their management and not by thieves. On the other hand, I know for a fact that Huawei has entered the mobile phone market by buying, and not by stealing, all the required technology and know-how from various companies, e.g. from Siemens. Like other Chinese companies activating in various domains, after being taught well how to duplicate Western designs, Huawei was able to make them both better and cheaper, so the companies which have foolishly sold their smartphone technologies to Huawei have exited the market, while Huawei would have become the dominant producer, had it not been sabotaged by USA in order to prevent that. Those who believe that the only reason that explains the commercial successes of the Chinese is IP theft are delusional. Obviously they have started by copying whenever they could do that, but in recent years the Chinese companies have been much more innovative than most US companies, which are too risk-averse and too much oriented only towards corporate customers or towards very rich customers, to be able to launch any really innovative product.