Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping (pictured) insisted the company won’t retreat from international markets, with plans to continue to push a new five-year globalisation strategy covering standards, talent and supply chains.

In his keynote, Guo said for the future Huawei and the industry had to “to look up above the politics, above the partisanship… let’s look up. Let’s look ahead”. He added it is committed to supporting customers who select to do business with company.

Despite a decline in consumer business revenue caused by trade restrictions, the company said last year it is confident its carrier and enterprise units will continue to grow steadily. China accounted for two-thirds of revenue in 2020 and 2021 figures will be released at end-March.

Guo said it is significantly increasing strategic investment in foundational technologies, working with partners to “reshape our technological paradigm”. It is focusing on fundamental theories, architectures and software, which will support long-term and sustainable development of the ICT industry.

“We are investing even more into optimising system architecture and doubling software performance.”

With the data capacity of wireless and fibre networks and shortage capacities reaching their limits, he stated “we must explore new theories and architectures to achieve digital sustainability”.

The explosive growth in AI is driving demand for computing capacity, added Guo. However, the executive cautioned that hardware development is slowing. Reiterating the company’s focus on software, he pledged to “massively improve” performance, after already doubling a number of key indicators such as the number of wireless cells and users supported.