Huawei’s Vision for Growth: Strategic Insights from Xu Zhijun at MWC Shanghai 2025
In his keynote at MWC Shanghai 2025, Huawei’s Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman, Xu Zhijun, outlined strategic pathways for telecom operators to rejuvenate growth amidst an industry facing maturity and saturation challenges. Addressing a global audience of industry leaders and technology innovators, Xu emphasized the importance of capturing emerging user segments such as delivery riders and livestreamers, significantly boosting high-definition video consumption, integrating 5G connectivity extensively in vehicles, and expanding FTTR (Fiber To The Room) technology to serve small and medium enterprises effectively. Xu’s detailed roadmap provides a pragmatic yet visionary blueprint designed to empower operators to harness new consumer behaviors, optimize network resources, and unlock substantial market potential in the digital era. The following is the full text of his speech, translated from Chinese.
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.
I’d like to thank GSMA for inviting me. It’s a great pleasure to join you here at MWC Shanghai. Since the founding of GSMA in 1987, the telecom industry has experienced nearly 40 years of rapid growth. These days, however, we have entered an era of technology oversupply: in major markets, basic consumer needs have been fully met and revenue growth has stagnated. The whole industry is now in a stable development period and facing growth challenges. Industry players are working hard to explore opportunities and pathways for growth. I want to use this opportunity to share a few of our findings — which may suggest a few pathways to drive growth. I will focus on four main points.
1. Ramp up for changes and meet new demands with high growth potential
The telecom market has become very mature, but even a mature market is not set in stone; change is everywhere. One effective pathway to achieve growth is to start from the end users, gain insight into the changes in their needs, and then, through network build-out and optimization, create products and services to meet those changing needs — especially needs with high growth potential. Let me give two examples of such growth-oriented demands.
The first example is delivery riders, including food delivery couriers, parcel couriers, and ride-hailing drivers. Globally, this is a new and fast-growing user group: from 30 million in 2020 to 70 million in 2024, and it is expected to reach 160 million by 2030, about 5% of the global workforce. They bring great convenience to our lives, and for carriers, they represent a rapidly growing segment of new high-value users. For example, when food delivery riders are delivering orders, they need to call the customer upon arrival or if any issues need communication. Their average monthly call duration — MOU (Minutes of Usage) — is four times that of a typical user. In the Chinese market, food delivery riders’ MOU is around 800 minutes per month. When they are not taking orders and have downtime, they often watch online videos to relax, so their data usage — DOU (Data Usage per user) — is twice that of a typical user. As a result, a rider’s ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) is 1.6 times that of a normal user.
Another example is livestreamers. With the rapid rise of mobile Internet, livestreaming has become a new profession that is growing quickly worldwide. The number of professional livestreamers increased from 10 million in 2022 to 50 million in 2024, and by 2030 it is expected to reach 130 million, roughly 4% of the global workforce. The content that streamers create allows people to see a more exciting world and a richer daily life. For carriers, they too are a fast-growing group of new high-value users, and the network has become their production system. A strong network is essential for livestreamers: their DOU is five times that of a typical user. In the Chinese market, a livestreamer’s monthly DOU can reach 100 GB, and their ARPU is four times that of a typical user.
In fact, many new user groups, new devices and applications, and new user behaviors have emerged. In addition to delivery riders and livestreamers, there are e-sports players, smart glasses, trendy smart gadgets, working on high-speed trains, binge-watching TV series on the subway, and so on. These changes are developing rapidly and bringing new demand characteristics — for example, different types of services, different usage locations, sudden surges in demand, real-time requirements, and ubiquitous connectivity. Looking at the global market, those carriers who have caught these growth-oriented needs are seeing relatively better growth, while those who haven’t are facing greater challenges in achieving growth.
2. Boost HD video supply and consumption through coordinated effort across the ecosystem
With the explosive growth of short videos worldwide, they now account for about 50% of mobile data traffic. However, the supply and consumption of high-definition video still haven’t been handled well. On one hand, some consumers can’t fully use up their data plans, causing some of them to downgrade their plans; on the other hand, we still don’t have an adequate supply of HD video for users to consume.
We all know that the value of high-definition video is definite. For consumers, it means a better viewing experience. For OTT platforms, HD video can improve their business conversion rates. For carriers, 1080p video brings about 5× the traffic of 360p. Suppose a user watches 50 hours of video in a month and it’s all in 1080p — that would mean consuming roughly 31.5 GB of data. Meanwhile, the average monthly DOU in China in 2024 was 18.2 GB, which shows there is huge potential yet to be tapped.
But looking at the current share of HD video in overall consumption, the gap is obvious. According to statistics from typical major cities in China, content at 1080p and above accounts for only 22% of mobile video traffic. There are multiple reasons behind this gap. From the OTT perspective, the price of outbound Internet bandwidth is still somewhat high, so during peak hours they lower video bitrates to control costs. For carriers, the ToB (enterprise) business is an important growth avenue, and if they lower outbound bandwidth prices, it would impact their enterprise revenue. From the device perspective, continuously watching HD video drains a lot of power, and when the battery level falls below around 30%, video apps automatically reduce the bitrate.
So the challenges are multi-faceted and require systematic solutions. First, for carriers: they should price outbound Internet bandwidth appropriately to encourage OTT providers to increase the supply of HD content, thereby boosting HD content consumption and overall net revenue. Perhaps we can try this experiment: On the premise of maintaining the current outbound bandwidth revenue for OTT content providers, have all OTT providers supply videos in HD (1080p) and see how much more traffic consumers use and how much DOU increases, and then calculate the cost-benefit. For OTT content providers, they should increase their supply of HD content, enhance the user experience, and achieve higher conversion rates. At the same time, network equipment vendors need to keep innovating to improve network capabilities and reduce the per-bit cost of bandwidth. Finally, device manufacturers need to reduce the power consumption of video streaming and improve battery life, in order to ensure a better experience for users.
3. Bring 5G to every car for new growth in intelligent connected vehicles
Letting 5G connect every car is a common aspiration of car owners and carriers, but automakers don’t necessarily think so. This is why currently only about 30% of vehicles are 5G-connected. Why are automakers unwilling to use 5G connectivity for cars? The main reason is that the costs are too high — both the 5G IPR (intellectual property rights) fees and the price of the T-Box module are high. Therefore, we hope GSMA can play a role, and that through joint efforts across the industry we can keep the 5G IPR fees for vehicles within a reasonable range. Meanwhile, we also need to ensure healthy competition among carriers in the connected-vehicle market: we should avoid a scenario where the price of connecting each car gets pushed too low, turning it into a low-value battleground. Additionally, I want to emphasize two points:
Both the car and its cockpit need network connectivity, but their needs and business models are different, so they should have separate connections. For the cockpit’s connectivity, a B2C business model can be used, sharing the smartphone ecosystem — letting consumers choose the type of connectivity and purchase data plans on their own. For the vehicle’s T-Box connectivity, a B2B business model should be used, with the car company continuing to decide the connectivity method.
When driving autonomously, cars must be able to sense their surroundings and make decisions on their own, without relying on network connectivity as a prerequisite.
4. Bring FTTR to micro and small businesses to seize opportunities in the intelligent era
FTTR (Fiber To The Room) has already demonstrated its value in meeting the needs of high-end home broadband users, effectively boosting the ARPU of high-end broadband customers and increasing carriers’ revenue. By 2025, the number of FTTR users in China will reach 75 million, whereas outside of China there are only just over 500,000, so there is enormous potential for growth. With the advancement of FTTR technology, it’s now possible to use a single fiber for access and extend it via indoor optical splitters to up to 128 fiber drops to different rooms or locations. This kind of FTTR solution can effectively address the issues currently faced by street-side shops, small offices, or campus venues: for example, poor Wi-Fi experience for customers and employees, no guarantees for critical applications (such as point-of-sale systems), an insufficient number of device connections, and lack of O&M (operations & maintenance) support when network faults occur. An FTTR network can meet the requirements for high-speed, stable, low-latency connectivity with full Wi-Fi coverage. Globally there are over 500 million micro and small businesses. If carriers can leverage FTTR to meet these needs, it will represent a significant opportunity and pathway for growth.
These are the few findings I’ve shared today, which may also serve as a few pathways for growth for carriers. Of course, different countries and different carriers operate in different environments and face different competitive landscapes, so opportunities and pathways for growth will differ as well. Huawei is willing to work together with carriers to jointly explore opportunities and pathways for growth, and to help carriers achieve sustained growth.