Above: Huawei executives at the annual flagship event on innovation and intellectual property protection in Shenzhen.
Huawei said that it had 560 million dollars in patent licensing income in 2022, thanks to its large portfolio of patents related to the information and telecommunications industries, it said. It now has some 200 bilateral licensing agreements with other companies and over 350 other companies have obtained patent licenses from Huawei through patent pools.
The company remains one of the world’s top investors in R&D, with 161.5 billion yuan (22.3 billion US dollars) in spent in R&D in 2022. It led international patent applications before the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) with 7,689 applications in 2022.
Senior Huawei executives at Huawei’s annual flagship event on innovation and intellectual property protection in Shenzhen, which this year was titled
“Bridging Horizons of Innovations: Sharing IP, Driving Innovation”, said on Thursday 13th July that the company would continue to be committed to investing in research and development to drive the evolution from 5G telecommunications technologies to 5.5G, and would continue to work together with partners and stakeholders in building connectivity.
Addressing the event remotely, Tomas Lamanauskas, Deputy Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), said that Huawei has been a key player in the collaborative process of supporting cost-effective, inclusive innovation of scale.
“As we continue to tackle global challenges and work towards rescuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), conducive policies and frameworks are essential to help innovations ecosystems flourish,” Lamanauskas added.
Specifically on 5G technology, Huawei leads the list of patents granted with 15.4% of the total worldwide, according to data from IPlytics.
A global digital infrastructure provider, Huawei has been at the forefront of innovation in recent years. In 2013 the European Patent Office (EPO) received 266,000 applications, of which 1,077 were filed by Huawei, making it one of the top applicants in the region. The company closed that year with 7,300 recognized patents in Europe alone.
Since then, Huawei invested approximately US$300 million annually dedicated to the licensed use of patented technologies and achieved recognition of 36,500 patents globally. This path of constant commitment to technological development went from investing 10% of the company’s profits in research and development to 25.1% of its revenue in 2022.
“We have established ourselves as one of the leading innovative companies from our early years, with a principle of investing at least 10 percent of our revenue in research and development,” said Cesar Funes, Vice President of Public Affairs, Huawei Latin America and Caribbean.
“We have expanded our investment in more fundamental researches in recent years, as we have become an industry leader, in addition to the applied researches,” he added.
Huawei has recently been recognized as one of the 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2023 by a US-based global consultancy, ranking 8 among technology companies, pharmaceutical, and industrial manufacturing companies.
The company has defined its mission as bringing digital to every person, household, and organization to build a fully connected and intelligent world. Huawei has been one of the world’s top providers of telecommunications equipment worldwide.
“We charge reasonable prices in our patent licensing agreements. It is important for us to have the income from patent licensing, as it provides an incentive for companies like us to continue investing in research and development to develop innovative products and solutions,” said Michael Chen, Director of Corporate Communications, Huawei Latin America and the Caribbean. “It is important to strike a balance and make it sustainable.”
Huawei believes that digitization and connectivity are the elements on which a more sustainable and balanced future can be based, as we can use the digital technologies especially the smart technologies to develop more sustainable solutions for the world.
