They were trapped as soon as they incorporated in China.
Of course, the founding members all had CCP ties, they got massive funding from the government, and their first round of products were all based on trade secrets stolen from Nortel.
But that was decades ago, and people tend to forget that the company was built on top of the CCP stealing Nortel’s secrets and then underbidding them internationally, putting the Canadian company out of business. Nortel had to cover R&D costs, while Huawei just stole the results of Nortel’s R&D and then had CCP subsidies for the production.
Nortel wasn’t killed by Huawei stealing their IP, which certainly did happen. They tanked themselves with some terrible accounting that hid the terrible situation they put themselves in. Nortel and Enron are the reason GAAP is the gold standard and legally required to be reported these days.
They were trapped as soon as they incorporated in China.
Of course, the founding members all had CCP ties, they got massive funding from the government, and their first round of products were all based on trade secrets stolen from Nortel.
But that was decades ago, and people tend to forget that the company was built on top of the CCP stealing Nortel’s secrets and then underbidding them internationally, putting the Canadian company out of business. Nortel had to cover R&D costs, while Huawei just stole the results of Nortel’s R&D and then had CCP subsidies for the production.
Nortel wasn’t killed by Huawei stealing their IP, which certainly did happen. They tanked themselves with some terrible accounting that hid the terrible situation they put themselves in. Nortel and Enron are the reason GAAP is the gold standard and legally required to be reported these days.
Interesting story. I wonder what would have happened if Nortel produced the phones in Canada.
In that era, someone else in the telecoms business would have gone to China for production to compete with Nortel.
Results likely wouldn’t have been all that different.
Hmm; I wish the mods told me why they removed my comment so I don’t do it again.
Removed by mod