Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications

Huawei has increased its investment in basic 
research and theoretical breakthroughs to 
support the continued development of a digital, 
intelligent world.
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Wireless Networks
– 
We continue to explore and define new research 
directions and new services. We have expanded 
our collaborations with academic researchers; 
researched new air interface technologies, 
new network architectures, integration of 
communications and sensing, and key enabling 
technologies; and developed the fundamental 
theories of these technologies.
– 
We continue to explore basic architectures 
and basic components for wireless networks, 
preparing for the future expansion of low-band 
and high-band networks with much higher 
spectral and power efficiency.
Building Innovation 2.0
Huawei’s vision is a fully connected, intelligent 
world. To achieve this, we work to inspire 
passion for basic research around the world. Our 
combined passion drives development across the 
global innovation value chain.
Innovation 2.0 is, at its core, about making 
breakthroughs in fundamental theories and new 
inventions based on basic technologies that will help 
address global challenges in order to support our 
vision and assumptions for the future. This will create 
a steady stream of new inventions to drive progress 
in the digital world. In 2020, following the principle of 
openness for innovation, Huawei further expanded its 
efforts in basic research and actively pursued broader 
collaboration between the industry and academia. The 
accomplishments from such efforts and pursuit will be 
used to light up the future.
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  In a post-Shannon world, future development 
and prosperity in the ICT industry will require 
new breakthroughs in mathematics, physics, 
chemistry, and other basic research areas. This 
is particularly true in mathematics, which is not 
just the foundation of science, but also a crucial 
support for ongoing technological advances. In 
2020, Huawei published a list of 10 mathematical 
challenges facing the ICT industry. We hope that it 
will help guide and encourage new breakthroughs 
in theoretical research. Together we can solve 
global challenges like improving performance while 
reducing resource consumption; explainability in 
deep neural networks; and modernization of super-
large networks.
■
  Huawei is working to build an open ecosystem 
for research collaboration between the industry 
and academia. We believe business should shape 
academic research, and we have prompted 
extensive collaboration with universities and 
research institutions. These efforts support highly 
uncertain innovation projects and new ways to 
improve efficiency.

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2020 Annual Report
 
       
55
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Carrier and Enterprise Networks
– 
In this area, our research is focused on 
network protocols for connecting everything 
and every network, including deterministic 
services, intrinsic network security, and flexible 
addressing. We have also invited many 
academic and industry partners to join our 
research.
– 
An end-to-end deterministic networking 
experiment on a trial network has successfully 
demonstrated that with this new system in 
place, jitter can be less than 15 microseconds 
over a distance of 2,000 kilometers.
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Video CODEC
– 
In this area, we are working actively and closely 
with vendors and industry partners from around 
the world to complete the latest international 
video CODEC standards – VVC/H.266 and 
MPEG-5EVC – and develop the CUVA HDR 
standard.
– 
We are the world’s largest contributor to video 
standards, and have created industry-leading 
video standardization solutions for applications 
such as 4K, 8K, high dynamic range (HDR), and 
360-degree panoramic videos. This has helped 
ensure a better video experience for consumers 
and an open and flourishing video industry.
Innovation and Invention
Huawei has spent decades investing heavily in 
innovation and invention. We continued to see 
how this strategy successfully drives industry 
progress in 2020:
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Optical Networks
– 
With new progress in high-speed optoelectronic 
materials and components, we have supported 
evolution towards higher bit rate per 
wavelength over long-haul. We continue to 
deepen our research into the ultra-high-speed 
signal processing technology and have 
demonstrated that 1 Tbit/s per wavelength is 
feasible.
– 
We have made breakthroughs in key 
transmission technologies for achieving 800 
Gbit/s over short distances in data centers. We 
have also introduced an all-optical architecture 
and novel technologies to data centers, ending 
the backplane dimension constraint on system 
capacity. This maximizes the computing 
performance of data center networks.
■
 
Smartphone Media
– 
Thanks to breakthroughs in our camera 
technology, we have further improved our 
smartphones’ image definition, quality of HDR 
and strongly backlit images, color accuracy, 
night view noise reduction, and portrait mode 
effects, bringing users a brand new experience.
– 
We have also overcome some tough challenges 
regarding spatial computing and spatial video, 
both of which are critical. Free-viewpoint video 
and indoor high-precision positioning services 
are hugely appealing to consumers.
– 
Advances in our active noise canceling (ANC) 
and Bluetooth HD audio CODEC technologies 
have delivered a comfortable and nearly lossless 
ultra-HD audio experience to our device users.
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Basic Software
– 
Huawei is committed to sustained supply as 
well as innovation and breakthroughs in this 
area to increase competitiveness.
– 
Euler kernel has become the first project 
to obtain both the ASIL-D and CC EAL 5+ 
certifications.
– 
Our openEuler, openGauss, and MindSpore have 
been recognized as being among China’s top 10 
open source projects and technical innovation 
platforms in light of their contributions to the 
expansion of China’s software industry.
– 
RTOS, GaussDB, EulerOS, and HuaweiJDK are 
among the company’s most shipped software 
products.
– 
Our GaussDB, a distributed, cloud-based 
database, delivers financial-institution-class 
levels of reliability, and has been integrated into 
class-A banking systems, where it is capable of 
handling critical bank functions.
– 
RTOS, with its microkernel-based architecture, 
performed 30% better, with 30% less noise, 
than Linux on 5G networks.

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56
       
Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.
– 
We have obtained over 20 third-party 
certifications for our basic software.
– 
By building trustworthiness in our basic 
software, we have achieved the requirements 
stipulated in our 
Software Process 
Trustworthiness Capability Framework V1.0
, and 
have built a software management system that 
prioritizes trustworthiness.
■
 
Materials and Techniques
– 
We are a leading innovator in the device sector. 
For example, we were the first to bring the 
Falcon Wing hinge design to foldable phones. 
Based on an inward-folding design, the phone’s 
amorphous alloy hinge allows it to fold out 
to reveal an eight-inch screen. Looking to 
the future, we will continue to innovate new 
precision mechanisms and flexible displays, 
crafting pocket-sized phones with big screens.
– 
Huawei was the first company to pack a set of 
foldable, long-focus cameras into its phones. 
With this technique, phones can be less than 
1 cm in thickness, while offering a 10x optical 
zoom. This is the highest smartphone zoom 
available to date.
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Engineering
– 
By introducing low-profile and compact arrays, 
we have restructured and simplified the 
antenna array architecture, reducing its weight 
by 30%.
– 
We have made breakthroughs in 
electromagnetic supersurface and material 
techniques, guaranteeing low channel loss.
– 
We have applied antenna decoupling techniques 
during base station design, allowing for new 
physical structures that make site acquisition 
and deployment easier.
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Trustworthiness
– 
To address both the opportunities and 
challenges presented by digital sovereignty, 
better protect customer privacy, and 
improve product security and resilience, 
Huawei continues its research into theories, 
technologies, and engineering practices in 
trustworthiness. We have been an active 
player in driving advances in the theory and 
standardization of trustworthiness.
– 
Huawei is a major contributor to 
trustworthiness-related task forces in the 
International Organization for Standardization 
(ISO), Telecommunication Standardization 
Sector of the International Telecommunication 
Union (ITU-T), 3rd Generation Partnership 
Project (3GPP), European Telecommunications 
Standards Institute (ETSI), Internet Engineering 
Task Force (IETF), and other standards 
organizations. We actively participate in 
standardization for AI trustworthiness and are 
fully dedicated to enhancing the trustworthiness 
of open source software.
– 
We are reshaping the architecture of 
trustworthy computing in the AI era with 
a multi-language trustworthy framework, 
compatible across various platforms, which 
offers data processing volume thousands of 
times higher than that of previous versions.
By the end of 2020, Huawei held 
a total of 100,000+ active patents, 
across 40,000+ families.
Huawei has one of the 
largest patent portfolios 
in the world
Every year, Huawei invests 
over 10% of its sales revenue 
into R&D.
2020
105,000
 
R&D employees
53.4% of our total workforce
15.9% of the company’s 
total revenue
2020
R&D expenditure 
CNY
141,893
million
Huawei’s R&D investment over 
the past decade has exceeded 
CNY720,000 million.

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2020 Annual Report