[Dubai, UAE, November 13, 2025] Huawei hosted its sixth Innovation and Intellectual Property (IP) Forum, gathering global experts to explore the role of openness and IP protection in advancing technological and social progress. Building on this global milestone, Huawei highlighted how its commitment to open innovation is also helping advance innovation ecosystems and digital transformation efforts across the Middle East and Central Asia.
“Open innovation drives society and technology forward, and it’s in our DNA,” said the company’s Chief Legal Officer, Liuping Song. “Huawei respects the IP of others and protects its own, including patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.”
Huawei has invested more than 10% of its annual revenue in R&D; over the past four years, the investment has reached 20%. This consistent investment made Huawei the 6th largest company for R&D expenditure for eight consecutive years, according to the EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard. In 2024, Huawei’s patent licensing revenue was approximately US$630 million. The patent royalties that Huawei has paid over the years are nearly three times the amount of royalties it has received. It reflects Huawei’s long-term belief in responsible innovation and open collaboration – principles that are increasingly shaping how industries in the Middle East pursue their own digital transformation goals.
Marco Alemán, Assistant Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), noted that, “Huawei is a leading global user of WIPO’s Global IP Services and a strong driver of innovation. Huawei had 6,600 published Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications in 2024, and has been the top user of the PCT system since 2014.”
At the forum, Huawei unveiled the innovations that won its sixth Top Ten Inventions award, spanning a range of business domains that are key to future development, including computing, the HarmonyOS operating system, and storage.
Alan Fan, Vice President and Head of the Intellectual Property Rights Department at Huawei, emphasized that, as a leading contributor to technology in the ICT sector, Huawei shares its technologies through open-source software, open hardware, patent filings, standard contributions, and academic papers.
These efforts are mirrored in Huawei’s ongoing initiatives across the Middle East and Central Asia, where the company continues to support governments, enterprises, and universities in building stronger innovation ecosystems and local developer communities. Through programs such as Huawei ICT Academy and its open platforms, including openEuler and OpenHarmony, Huawei is helping cultivate a new generation of talent equipped for the intelligent era.
As of September 2025, Huawei has established more than 310 ICT Academies in partnership with leading universities across 19 countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. Over the past decade, Huawei has trained more than half a million ICT talents and is committed to cultivating one million ICT professionals in the region over the next 10 years. To date, the company has also provided 48,000 Huawei Certified ICT Associate (HCIA) certificates to students and professionals, equipping them with globally recognized technical skills.
In 2024, Huawei published a record 37,000 patents, more than 10,000 technical contributions to standards organizations, and published over 1,000 academic papers. Meanwhile, the source code for OpenHarmony grew by another 10 million lines, with submissions from over 8,100 community contributors, and openEuler exceeded 10 million installations.
These achievements extend beyond China, contributing directly to the technological infrastructure that underpins the region’s AI, cloud, and connectivity progress. In the Middle East and Central Asia, Huawei’s technology sharing and open-source platforms have enabled local developers and research institutions to accelerate innovation in alignment with national digital strategies.
By the end of 2024, in the cellular standard field, more than 2.7 billion 5G devices have been licensed under Huawei’s patents. In the Wi-Fi domain, over 1.2 billion consumer electronic devices have been licensed under Huawei’s patents, and in multimedia, more than 3.2 billion multimedia devices have been licensed under the company’s video codec patents. A total of 48 Fortune Global 500 companies are Huawei licensees, either directly or indirectly. Several of these partnerships extend to the Middle East, supporting the deployment of 5G-Advanced, all-optical networks, and cloud computing infrastructure across multiple industries.
Huawei’s enterprise business continues to strengthen its role as a trusted digital transformation partner across the Middle East and Central Asia. Today, Huawei collaborates with more than 3,000 partners and serves tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) throughout the region, providing the technological foundations that enable future growth.
As part of its efforts to drive open innovation, Huawei’s free Chaspark Patent platform, launched in June 2024, has now introduced AI-powered search and summary tools. The platform’s expansion will soon reach universities and research institutions across the Middle East, drastically reducing cost of patent information search and supporting innovation for students and entrepreneurs.
Huawei Cloud also continues to accelerate regional innovation, now working with over 400 local partners across 10 industries, including more than 30 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Jointly with over 150 partners, Huawei Cloud has developed and deployed more than 100 tailored industry solutions across the Middle East and Central Asia.
Over three decades, from its first patent to leadership in 5G, cloud, and open-source, Huawei has championed openness as a driver of progress, reflected in its expanding patents, open-source projects, and global partnerships. In a world where AI, connectivity, and sustainability come together, Huawei’s vision remains clear and simple: innovation thrives not in isolation, but through collaboration, governance, and shared responsibility.
About Huawei
Founded in 1987, Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. We have more than 208,000 employees, and we operate in more than 170 countries and regions, serving more than three billion people around the world.
Our Vision and mission is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. To this end, we will drive ubiquitous connectivity and promote equal access to networks; bring cloud and artificial intelligence to all four corners of the earth to provide superior computing power where you need it, when you need it; build digital platforms to help all industries and organizations become more agile, efficient, and dynamic; redefine user experience with AI, making it more personalized for people in all aspects of their life, whether they’re at home, in the office, or on the go.
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