As part of its move away from hardware, Huawei is scaling up its cloud services and startup support in Asia Pacific and while travel and hospitality is still not top of mind, its move into this vertical seems inevitable with the expansion of its headquarters in Singapore and a recent first move in the Middle East.

It is understood current staff count in Singapore stands at 700, and a slew of talent from top tech brands has been joining the Chinese tech giant in recent months. Its global workforce is at 197,000.

Huawei, facing pressure in Western markets and a slowdown in consumer business amid US sanctions, has been steadily moving its focus away from manufacturing to become a tech and software company that believes “deeply in the power of digital technology to provide fresh solutions to the problems the world is facing right now. We will keep on innovating to help build a low-carbon, intelligent world,” said Eric Xu, Huawei’s Rotating Chairman, at the release of business results for the first half earlier this month.

In H1, Huawei generated CNY320.4 billion (US$49.56 billion) in revenue, with its net profit margin reaching 9.8%. Its carrier business revenue totalled CNY136.9 billion, enterprise business revenue: CNY42.9 billion and consumer business revenue: CNY135.7 billion.

Announcing the results, Xu said, “We’ve set our strategic goals for the next five years. Our aim is to survive, and to do so sustainably. We’ll do this by creating practical value for our customers and partners. Despite a decline in revenue from our consumer business caused by external factors, we are confident that our carrier and enterprise businesses will continue to grow steadily.”

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