Huawei in leadership reshuffle at consumer business unit

Huawei Technologies Co. has made changes to its senior executive lineup at the company’s consumer business unit as the resurgent tech giant regains its lost ground in the smartphone market even under years of U.S. sanctions that has cut off its access to American technology.

Yu Chengdong, former CEO of Huawei’s consumer business group, has been appointed chairman of the unit while He Gang, previously the group's chief operating officer, is taking over as the unit's CEO, according to domestic media reports. The change was announced internally April 30 when it took effect, the reports said, quoting Huawei sources familiar with the matter.

The 54-year-old Yu, who joined Huawei in 1993, had headed Huawei's consumer unit, which includes its smartphone business, since 2011.

"Huawei has a well-established internal governance structure, and this appointment is part of regular management reshuffle, which allows Yu to have more energy to create quality products for consumers," the sources said.

But a check by Shenzhen Daily on Yu’s profile page on Huawei’s official website May 3 showed that no updates have been made on his role at the consumer business group. Yu's role as chairman of Huawei's smart car solutions business group, a unit Huawei has said it intends to spin off into a new company, remains unchanged.

Domestic digital news outlet The Paper quoted sources familiar with the matter as saying May 1 that the management changes were actually made half a month ago.

After stepping down as CEO of the consumer business group, Yu is expected to focus on business strategy of the unit and as chairman, he would handle administrative matters, including personnel, The Paper said. Meanwhile, He, who joined Huawei in 1998 and has long worked at the consumer business unit, will take more responsibilities in handling the unit’s daily business operations.

The highly outspoken Yu is one of Huawei's highest-profile executives and his off-the-cuff comments have earned him the nickname “Big Mouth Yu”from Chinese internet users.

In Huawei, he is widely known as "Madman Yu" because he constantly comes up with crazy ideas that make him enemies even within the firm.

Yu's the man some love to hate as he always boasts and sometimes even exaggerates when speaking at major industry events and appearing with Chinese bloggers to pitch products and Huawei's innovation. During one product launch event, he famously used the phrase "far, far ahead" six times to describe Huawei products and the phrase has gone viral in China to describe Huawei's competitiveness.

A video titled “The Madman Yu Chengdong, Fueling Huawei's Ambition to Stay 'Far Ahead'” on Youtube has been viewed 46,000 times since it was posted seven months ago. It has also received 11,000 likes and 130 comments.

“Yu Chengdong sounds like another Steve Jobs but with engineering skills on top of it,”commented @Cam35mm.

“If Huawei was a Norwegian/Danish/ Italian/western phone, the CEO would be on the cover of westerns magazines, there would be movies about it, the US Congress would give him standing ovations during his keynote speech”said @mbvgvskvrs868.

Yu was also central to Huawei’s forays into Europe two decades ago, when few telecom carriers on the continent had heard of the company or even considered the Shenzhen-based firm as a potential telecom equipment supplier.

In 2004, Huawei was desperate to break into the European market and the chance came when small Dutch telecom services provider Telfort wanted to deploy a 3G network.

Yu, then vice-president at the firm’s wireless networks unit, worked hard to help Huawei land a 10-year contract worth 230 million euros (US$246 million) with Telfort by devising a cost-effective solution within a week. That deal put Huawei on the map, which led to contracts with British telecoms titans BT Group and Vodafone Group the following year.

“Telfort was the door-opener, and after we signed BT and Vodafone as customers, that was then finally the point when Huawei was accepted all over Europe,” Stefan Scheuerle, a former Huawei sales executive who worked on the Telfort deal, told South China Morning Post in an interview in 2019.