To give its businesses in new markets an extra push, Zhang says the company has changed its communications strategy in recent years.

"We used to deal mainly with telecommunications operators and channel partners," Zhang says.

But offering technology solutions to enterprises has changed all that, he says.

"We need to meet a huge number of customers and explain what we do and what we can offer — and we need to become more open-minded."

Nearly half of the company's 150,000 staff work in research and development, and it will invest $5.5 billion in research and development this year, up from $4.85 billion last year, Zhang says.

"Research and development is our growth engine."

However, in May the European Commission decided to use trade defense tools to set barriers against China's mobile and telecommunications products, even though none of Huawei's rivals has complained about the Chinese company's activities.

In the US, Huawei and another Chinese company, ZTE, have been accused of posing a security risk.

"The reasons (offered by the US) are groundless," Zhang says. "The fact is that since we started to go global, there has not been one security complaint against us. Our services and products cover about 2 billion people worldwide.

"In fact, we are always doing our best to offer security and anti-virus solutions to our partners."