Innovation and Intellectual Property

In 2025, Huawei's R&D investment reached CNY192.3 billion, totaling more than CNY1.38 trillion over the last decade. The company has held a total of more than 165,000 active granted patents, and has submitted more than 7,000 standards contributions in multiple fields.

In 2023, Huawei announced multiple patent licensing programs and published royalty rates for its handsets, Wi-Fi, and IoT patents at the 2023 Innovation and Intellectual Property Forum themed "Bridging Horizons of Innovations".

In 2021, 2021 was a milestone year for Huawei. For the first time in its history, the company became a net licensor, meaning its IP licensing income exceeded its outgoing royalty payments.

In 2020, Huawei's cumulative R&D investment over the preceding two decades had surpassed USD110 billion. By the end of 2020, Huawei had held more than 100,000 active granted patents worldwide.

In 2020, Huawei filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Verizon in the US, demanding compensation for patent infringement.

In 2020, Huawei joined the Open Invention Network to support the development of the Linux community.

In 2020, Huawei ranked third on the 2020 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard released by the European Commission.

In 2019, Huawei had the second most patents granted by the European Patent Office.

In 2019, Since its first patent license agreement signed in 2001, Huawei has paid over USD6 billion in royalties, with nearly 80% of that amount paid to US companies.

In 2017, Huawei was one of the top 3 Linux kernel contributors.

In 2016, Huawei and Samsung filed multiple patent infringement lawsuits against each other in China and the United States. In 2019, Samsung reached a settlement with Huawei and paid Huawei licensing fees.

In 2016, Huawei launched the P9 smartphone, the first phone with a Leica dual-lens camera, allowing users to capture pictures in both color and black and white. The product set a new standard for smartphone photography.

In 2015, Huawei signed a patent license agreement with Apple, to whom it licensed wireless standard essential patents.

In 2014, Huawei launched its landmark smartphone, the Huawei Ascend Mate7.

In 2013, Huawei licensed its wireless standard essential patents to Teltronic, a European wireless equipment vendor.

In 2011, Huawei established the 2012 Laboratories, a cradle for innovation where Huawei researchers explore platform technologies and other technologies of the future.

In 2011, Huawei filed a lawsuit against Motorola in the United States after being involved in an IP dispute with the company. The U.S. court ruled in favor of Huawei and issued a temporary injunction prohibiting Motorola from transferring Huawei's trade secrets in its possession. As part of the resolution of that lawsuit, Motorola paid Huawei a fee and obtained permission to transfer Huawei's confidential information to Nokia Siemens Networks as part of an existing M&A deal.

In 2010, Huawei filed a lawsuit against ZTE in Europe for patent and trademark infringement. In 2015, the European Court of Justice made a ruling that helped establish legal requirements for the licensing negotiations of standard essential patents (SEPs).

In 2009, Huawei was named as one of the World's 500 Most Influential Brands by World Brand Lab.

In 2009, Huawei won the Corporate Award from the IEEE Standards Association.

In 2009, Huawei, NTT DOCOMO, France Télécom (now Orange), the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), and VoiceAge jointly developed G.711.1, an extension to a widely used speech codec. As one of the core developers, Huawei established a patent pool.

In 2008, Huawei filed 1,737 patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), ranking first in the world for the first time.

In 2007, Huawei and Symantec established a joint venture, Huawei Symantec, to develop storage products.

In 2006, Huawei released the OptiX OSN 6800, the industry's first optical transport network (OTN) equipment, helping to drive transformation in the optical transport field.

In 2006, Huawei launched the MA5600T, the industry's first platform to support both fiber access and copper access. Compared with its counterparts, this product used the least energy while delivering the same capacity, thus leading the industry's evolution into greener access networks.

In 2004, Huawei launched the industry's first distributed base station and won a contract worth more than USD25 million from Telfort, a Dutch operator. This was Huawei's first major breakthrough in the European market.

In 2004, Huawei launched the NE5000E core router that supports cluster networking based on a forward-looking architecture. This product has since set the gold standard for architecture in the industry and is still a star product today.

In 2003, Huawei launched the MA5300, the industry's first digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) built on Internet Protocol (IP) architecture.

In 2003, Cisco and Huawei had an IP dispute. The following year, the two parties settled the dispute and filed a joint request to a United States court to terminate the lawsuit.

In 2003, Huawei and 3Com established a joint venture. Huawei provided technology and R&D employees, and 3Com invested USD165 million. In 2006, Huawei sold its shares in the joint venture to 3Com for USD882 million.

In 2002, Huawei signed its first patent licensing agreement with Ericsson in the wireless field.

In 2001, Huawei signed a patent license agreement with Qualcomm. Since then, Huawei has conducted extensive cross-licensing negotiations with IP holders in the ICT industry and has entered into more than 100 patent license agreements with major global ICT companies across Europe, the United States, Japan, and South Korea.

In 2001, Huawei sold Avansys Power, a subsidiary that specialized in power supply, to Emerson for USD750 million. This marked the first time Huawei monetized its R&D capabilities.

In 2000, Huawei was granted its first US patent.

In 1999, Huawei submitted its first patent application in the United States, its first patent application outside China, which helped support the market expansion of its products worldwide.

In 1999, Huawei launched the OptiX 2500+, the first multi-service transmission platform (MSTP) in the industry, leading the optical transport industry's evolution from synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) to MSTP.

In 1998, Huawei was granted its first patent in China.

In 1997, Huawei launched its wireless GSM solutions.

In 1995, Huawei filed its first patent application in China. That year, Huawei filed six patent applications in China for different technical fields.

In 1995, Huawei established its Intellectual Property Department to improve its IP management and protection process and management system.

In 1994, Huawei applied for its first trademark (" 華為").

In 1993, Huawei launched the C&C08, a large-scale digital exchange.