Dell's channel boss wary of threat from Huawei

Joyce Mullen says Huawei has emerged as a serious competitor after 'growing like crazy'

Huawei has emerged as a competitor to Dell after "growing like crazy in multiple countries", according to Dell's global channel boss Joyce Mullen.

Speaking to members of the press at Dell Technologies World, Mullen said Huawei has been "growing like crazy in multiple countries" in the last few years, and predicted that the Chinese vendor will "keep us on our toes for a long time".

She said that Dell's added breadth and scale since acquiring EMC and bringing its seven business units together has not made it impervious to the competition.

"I worry about lots of competitors; I don't think we ever have a corner on the market in any way, shape or form," said Mullen.

"We have to be mindful of the companies that are trying to be as broad as we are. There are a couple out there - maybe they're not our traditional competitors we think about - but, for example, Huawei is a super-interesting competitor that is going to keep us on our toes for a long time.

"We don't see them as much in the US, but they're growing like crazy in multiple countries.We are also potentially vulnerable to specialists. I think about a lot of specialists targeting our server business, a lot of specialists targeting our storage business and our data protection business - all that stuff."

Huawei grew revenues by 15.7 per cent year on year in 2017 to CNY 603.6bn (£63.7bn), while net profits soared by 28.1 per cent to CNY 47.5bn.

Its enterprise business saw 35 per cent growth during the year while its consumer business grew by 32 per cent. Lastly, Huawei's carrier business swelled by 2.5 per cent annually.

Last year, Huawei announced plans to launch three PC models to the consumer market, putting the vendor in direct competition with incumbents Dell, HP and Lenovo. Reuters reported that Huawei plans to launch its PCs into 12 countries globally.

The Chinese vendor has found itself ostracised from the US market over national security concerns. Indeed, in 2017, the Americas was the only region that saw declines for Huawei as revenues fell by 11 per cent.

Canalys chief analyst Alistair Edwards recently told Channelnomics Europe sister brand CRN that Huawei and other Chinese technology vendors will likely see more investment in EMEA.