BARCELONA:
Huawei's chairman yesterday shrugged of the risk that President Donald Trump
could issue an executive order banning the Chinese telecom giant, saying the
company could succeed without the US market. Guo Ping said such an order
"is not necessary and should not be released" but if issued would
have little impact on Huawei, which has become the leading supplier of the
backbone equipment for wireless mobile networks worldwide.

"In 2018
Huawei had revenues of over $100 billion. The share of US in this is really
small. That means the US market can be ignored by us," he told a press
conference in Barcelona on the eve of the Mobile World Congress trade fair.

Guo added that
such a move would hurt some small telecoms operators in the United States that
do use its equipment. US officials suspect Shenzhen-based Huawei's products
could be used by Beijing to spy on Western governments and have already
severely restricted the company's presence in the United States.

Washington
considers the matter urgent as countries around the world prepare to roll out
fifth-generation or 5G networks that will bring near-instantaneous
connectivity, vast data capacity and futuristic technologies such as
self-driving cars. The administration has been lobbying allies to block Huawei
from building 5G networks and Trump is reportedly mulling an executive order to
stop the Chinese firm from selling advanced equipment in the United States.

Huawei
strenuously denied its equipment could be used for espionage. "We have
never and we are not and we will never allow backdoors in our equipment and we
will never allow anyone from any country to do that in our equipment," Guo
said through an interpreter. "Huawei needs to abide by Chinese laws and also
by the laws outside China if we operate in those countries. Huawei will never,
and dare not, and cannot violate any rules and regulations in the countries
where we operate," he added. The United States did not represent the whole
world and Huawei hoped each country would make decisions based on its own
interests, Guo said.

Network operators
seeking to quickly deploy the new wireless networks are in a bind as Huawei's
5G equipment is seen as being considerable more advanced than that of its
rivals such as Sweden's Ericsson or Finland's NOKIA. The company has 180,000
employees in 170 countries and counts 45 of the world's biggest wireless
carriers as customers. Huawei Technologies unveiled a $2,600 folding smartphone
yesterday which it said was primed for next generation 5G mobile connections,
even as the United States campaigns to bar the Chinese company from such
networks over security concerns.

Huawei, the
world's second-largest smartphone vendor after Samsung, said it had taken the
lead on developing phones for 5G - which promise superfast internet speeds for
consumers and businesses - because it was also involved in developing the
networks. "This phone is not only for today for 5G but also for future 5G.
On all the benchmarks you can see the performance, the speed is the fastest for
5G in the world," said Richard Yu, head of Huawei's consumer business
group.

Speaking ahead of
the mobile industry's biggest global event, which kicks off today in Barcelona,
Yu said the Huawei Mate X will have two back-to-back screens which unfold to
become an eight-inch tablet display. Yu said the Mate X would be able to
download a 1 gigabyte movie in three seconds but also be priced at 2,299 euros
($2,607) when it goes on sale later this year, setting a new upper limit for
consumer smartphones.

Samsung
Electronics Co Ltd last week unveiled its own folding smartphone, priced at
nearly $2,000, in a bid to top the technology of Apple Inc and Chinese rivals
and reignite consumer interest amid slumping sales. Huawei, which is also the
world's biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny in
the West over US-led allegations of enabling Chinese state espionage,
accusations which the company denies. Huawei's chairman said yesterday recent
comments by US President Donald Trump that the US needed to get ahead in mobile
communications through competition rather than seeking to block technology was
"clear and correct".

Foldable screens

Phone makers will
focus on foldable screens and the introduction of blazing fast 5G wireless
networks at the world's biggest mobile fair starting Monday in Spain as they
try to reverse a decline in sales of smartphones. Huawei will also be in the
spotlight at the four-day Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona as the Chinese
telecom giant fights US efforts to persuade its allies not to use the company's
technology to build their 5G networks due to concerns that its gear could
facilitate Chinese spying.

The firm is the
leading manufacturer of equipment for the fifth-generation cellular networks
which operators are starting to install. The technology-known as 5G --  will bring near-instantaneous connectivity
for smartphones and devices from automobiles to robots. "This year we are
going to see real 5G ready launches happening in different countries and the
focus will be on where, when, how and what are the consumer benefits going to
be of 5G in 2019," said Ian Fogg, a mobile industry analyst at OpenSignal,
which collects and analyses data from mobile networks.

Huawei and other
firms are scheduled to carry out 5G smartphone demos at the fair even though
the next generation wireless network will not be widely available for several
more years. Samsung, the world's biggest seller of smartphones, unveiled a
handset that folds open to be a tablet on Wednesday in San Francisco, becoming
the first major manufacturer to offer the long-awaited feature.

China's Xiaomi
and several other firms are expected to follow Samsung's lead and present
foldable devices of their own in Barcelona although it was not clear if they
would be prototypes or commercially available devices such as Samsung's. -
Agencies