Huawei has won 28.4 billion yuan ($4 billion) worth of contracts for the construction of 5G infrastructure in China from the country's largest carrier, China Mobile, since the beginning of the year, Bloomberg reported, citing obtained procurement data. The news agency said that the contracts amount to the construction of 132,000 base stations in the country, which is over the half of the total amount the carrier ordered to be built this year.
The rest of the contracts were reportedly split between Huawei's competitors, with ZTE receiving around 10 billion yuan ($1.41 billion) worth of contracts and Ericsson being awarded 5 billion yuan ($710 million) in contracts.
Apart from winning contracts to build base stations, Huawei has reportedly also secured agreements with China Mobile to ship it around 70,000 smartphones equipped with 5G technology and 140,000 portable WiFi devices capable of working with 5G networks. The news agency wasn't able to estimate the value of these contracts, however.
The 28.4 billion yuan contract that Huawei won is just a part of Beijing's roughly 1.2 trillion yuan ($170 billion) project to spread 5G technology across the country over the course of five years to become a global leader in the sphere. China's President Xi Jinping called the 5G technology development a cornerstone for restoring the country's economy after it suffered a heavy blow due to the coronavirus outbreak.
US Crackdown Campaign
Yet this portion of the larger pie might help Huawei during a time when it remains under mounting pressure from the US, the news agency noted. Washington introduced limits on the business interactions of American companies with the Chinese tech giant, demanding that they obtain a special licence to export US technologies to Huawei. In recent developments, Trump threatened to cut the sale of chips made by American firms to the Chinese company.
In addition to this, the US attempted to push Huawei out of 5G markets across the world, demanding that other countries ban the tech giant from deploying its 5G equipment. The White House claims that Huawei helps Beijing to spy on its customers by installing backdoors in its equipment, but has not provided any proof to substantiate the allegations.
Both China's government and Huawei have denied any cooperation with the aim to spy on people, promising to sue Washington over its crackdown campaign. The Chinese tech giant has also vowed to find replacements for American technologies in the near future in order to become independent from them.
