Chinese enterprise customers of Huawei will be the first in the world to be able to subscribe to the company’s new Public Cloud Computing Services when it launches in July, according to Eric Xu, Huawei’s deputy chairman and rotating CEO.
Speaking at Huawei's Global Analyst Summit in Shenzhen Xu did not remark on which of China’s telecom carriers the company would partner with although he did say that he did not expect this strategy to create competitive friction with Chinese carriers, which have already indicated they plan to offer public cloud services as the Cloud did not represent a big part of their current business.
"Even if Huawei steps into this area, there would not be major competition," he added. "If Huawei can be successful, maybe there is a possibility for partnerships."
Xu said its upcoming cloud service would be limited to its home market, at least for now. "In markets outside of China, our first priority is to work together with our telecom operators, and develop public cloud services," he said.
In China, other large tech players like Microsoft and Amazon have already entered the public cloud space while Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced it would enter the U.S. cloud computing market.
Public cloud computing revenue in China is expected to approach $1 billion in 2015 and continue to grow at 33% a year for several years, according to consultancy IDC.
Huawei expects a total of 100 billion connections between people and by 2025, a figure that includes 8 billion smartphones, with 45% of those connections from smart and wearable devices.