Huawei's 2019 appears to be even worse than the terrible 2018 quartz
Last year, it was probably Huaweis worst since 2012. That year, a panel in the US House warned that (pdf) using the Chinese telecommunications giant's technology could be a national security risk.
At the beginning of 2018, Huawei, the world's largest provider of telecom equipment, was unable to reach an agreement to get an American operator to store their phones, and a leaked White House note on 5G technology said Huawei One reason why the US should consider nationalizing its next-generation wireless network. The year ended with the arrest in Canada by Meng Wanzhou, the company's chief financial officer and daughter of founder Ren Zhengfei, at the request of the US authorities, suspected of breaking the trade agreement against Iran.
Only two weeks to 2019, Huawei has already seen his sales manager in Poland arrested for spying for China. The company fired the employees after the arrest. Afterwards, Poland's Foreign Minister demanded a common EU-NATO position to exclude Huawei from its markets. Now, according to a Wall Street Journal report (paywall), a US accusation of stealing business secrets from companies like T-Mobile could be threatening.
Huawei previously met a 2014 T-Mobile civil law, as it was then a cell phone provider, allegedly attempting to steal secrets associated with a telephone testing robot to improve its own. T-Mobile said in the suit (pdf, p. 5) that it had taken Huawei staff on the camera trying to take parts and that they were trying to copy confidential information about the robot. A jury in 2017 found that Huawei's abused trade secrets and therefore violated the contract with T-Mobile, which said the two companies must protect proprietary information. Huawei said in a statement that disputes with T-Mobile were resolved and refused to comment on the possibility of a federal charge related to T-Mobile. It is unclear what other companies may be involved in the US probe.
All of this comes to the top of the legal process against Meng, with a court due to a date of disclosure of the hearing on February 6 during the Lunar New Year. The United States has until the end of this month to file a formal extradition request, according to the South China Morning Post.
Following Meng's arrest, Huawei seemed to overhaul his PR strategy to better cope with the suspicions surrounding it. At the end of December, foreign media invited to its headquarters, where one of its rotating chairman, Ken Hu, questioned a two-hour press conference. This week, Huawei's founder Ren, who rarely speaks to the media, met with journalists at the company's headquarters and said that Huawei would never do anything to hurt its customers and suggested the company was engaged in major political forces. "We are like a little sesame seed, stuck in the middle of conflict between two great forces," he said, according to a corporate transcript.
The new availability does not seem to have convinced that the company could be forced to share information with Beijing, despite Ren's claim that Huawei would decline such requests. Meanwhile, the actions of the Chinese government in the wake of the arrest show the arrest of Huaywe's destiny.
Beijing arrested several Canadian nationals shortly after Meng's arrest in early December. It escalated actions against Ottawa this week as it quickly tried a Canadian who had previously been convicted of drug smuggling in China and sentenced to death. A dramatic change from the 15-year-old prison sentence he was given in 2016. Also this week, a Canadian woman who traveled through Beijing back to Toronto, said she and her baby were removed from the plane by the Beijing airport police and interrogated in two. hours.
