China’s Controversial Tech Giant

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research Proposal on ‘The security threat fear against Huawei and mitigation plan to
revive the business’
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Introduction
Huawei is the second biggest smartphone manufacturer and supplier in the world after
Samsung. It has 18% more market share than Apple and other smartphone companies (Bowler,
2020). Despite such large market share, the Chinese consumer tech company is facing a huge
challenge in terms of consumer trust issue. The US Intelligence has claimed that China is using
Huawei for spying activity and this is a major blow for the company’s business in many of the
first world countries (Brandom, 2019). Thus, this paper will present a research proposal on
addressing the security threat fear around Huawei and mitigating the issue to revive the business.
It will provide an overview of the background of the research, research purpose and questions,
research design, and a schedule for budget and time for conducting the study.
Background
Huawei has been accused as a threat for national security by the United States and several
other nations. The US intelligence officials and the lawmakers have claimed that the Chinese
government has been exploiting the telecommunication giant for espionage, and that is a huge
threat for the national security, especially when the 5G technology is almost ready (Newman,
2020). Based on this serious claim, the US government has banned the American corporations
from engaging in any kind of business activities with Huawei and also banned Huawei from the
5G networks. Following this decision by the USA, several allies, and first world economies, like
Australia and New Zealand, have also joined the US against the Chinese company (Lecher &
Brandom, 2019). The Council on Foreign Relations reported that several vague Chinese
Intelligence Laws could force the telecom company to handover important data to handover to
the Chinese government creating severe threats to national security and the new 5G
infrastructure might contain backdoors that would give China the important access to the internal

2RESEARCH PROPOSAL
operations, and opportunities for Beijing to the attack the communication network as well as
other important sectors (Maizland & Chatzky, 2020). Hence, Huawei is being accused of cyber
espionage, theft of intellectual property as a U.S. jury found in 2017 that Huawei stole
intellectual property from T-Mobile and trade violations.
Although it has been denying the accusations, yet Huawei faced severe downfall in its
business due to these. It is losing its market share in the US along with Australia, New Zealand,
Taiwan and Japan (Buchholz, 2020). As reported by Aljazeera.com (2019), there was a 40% to
60% fall in the shipment of Huawei in 2019. The UK has banned Huawei from contributing its
core equipment in the 5G technology and infrastructure, which reduced its share in the UK to
35% (Buchholz, 2020). France and Germany have decided to increase security measures against
the backdoors into the communication channels.
Purpose of the research
Purpose of this research study is to investigate the impact of the US ban and accusations
on the company revenue, shipment and reputation and to find out potential measures to mitigate
the impact of the ban and revive its business.
The research objectives are:
 To examine the impact of cyber threat accusation and US ban on the revenue of Huawei
 To investigate the perception of consumers about Huawei’s products and its image
 To find out the opportunities for mitigating the impact of US ban for participating in the
5G network technology and to find new markets for business expansion

3RESEARCH PROPOSAL
The research questions are:
1) How much the business of Huawei got affected in the past one year due to the
accusations of cyber espionage by the United States of America?
2) What are the ways that Huawei can adopt to mitigate the negative effect of US ban on its
business and reputation?
3) How can the company can revive its business in the near future and stop losing further
market share?
Research design
Huawei must conduct a thorough preliminary study to analyze the larger picture of the
current market and its position in those markets, followed by an analysis of the potential markets
in which it can expand. The study will be an exploratory study to find out the scopes of new
markets where Huawei can expand its business. The research will be a secondary research on the
growth prospects of the markets of Huawei. There are some limitations for collecting primary
data and conducting primary research in this case. Being the second largest smartphone company
in the world, the number of retail and corporate consumers is extremely high for Huawei. Hence,
it is not possible to determine the appropriate population size and the selection parameters for
collection primary data (Johnston, 2017). Moreover, it is also highly challenging to determine an
appropriate sample size to reach out and collect primary information regarding the performance
of Huawei smartphones, and perception of the consumers about Huawei due to accusations by
the US intelligence. Therefore, secondary data will be used for conducting the study.
Global and domestic market analysis reports, annual report of Huawei, information on the
changes in the shipment volume, and expansion conditions in the unexplored markets in several

4RESEARCH PROPOSAL
countries where it did not venture out earlier, will be sourced from various secondary channels,
such as, news articles, official datasets, reports and publications, journal articles, and many
online publications. Both qualitative and quantitative information will be collected to understand
the implications in a detailed manner.
Qualitative analysis method will be applied to evaluate the information. Descriptive
method of analysis and interpretation will be followed for assessing the text and numeric
information regarding the research topic. The findings will be presented in the descriptive
manner, based on which recommendations will be provided for reviving the business of Huawei.
Budget and time schedule
The preliminary study will be conducted within six months and based on the findings,
Huawei will take business expansion measures so that revenue can be increased in the next
financial year. The time schedule is as follows:
Month
Task 1 2 3 4 5 6
Designing research strategy and framework
Literature review
Secondary data collection
Data analysis
Presenting the findings and discussion
Providing the conclusion and Report
submission

5RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Huawei has allocated $5000 for the preliminary secondary research and the budget schedule is as
follows:
Items Amount
Arranging equipment $ 850.00
Visit to library for literature study $ 130.00
Installing data analysis software $ 450.00
Secondary data collection expenses (For example, Purchasing of
books, journal or annual report of Huawei, cost of print out,
subscription charges for reports, journals, newspapers, accessing
online databases etc.) $ 3,500.00
Miscellaneous $ 70.00
Total $ 5,000.00

6RESEARCH PROPOSAL
References
Aljazeera.com. (2019). Huawei CEO says underestimated impact of US ban, sees revenue dip.
Retrieved 31 March 2020, from https://www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/huawei-ceo-
underestimated-impact-ban-sees-revenue-dip-190617090643551.html
Bowler, T. (2020). What is Huawei and how could it be a security threat?. Retrieved 31 March
2020, from https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47041341
Brandom, R. (2019). The case against Huawei, explained. Retrieved 31 March 2020, from
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/22/18634401/huawei-ban-trump-case-infrastructure-
fears-google-microsoft-arm-security
Buchholz, K. (2020). Infographic: Which Countries Have Banned Huawei?. Retrieved 31 March
2020, from https://www.statista.com/chart/17528/countries-which-have-banned-huawei-
products/
Johnston, M. P. (2017). Secondary data analysis: A method of which the time has
come. Qualitative and quantitative methods in libraries, 3(3), 619-626.
Lecher, C., & Brandom, R. (2019). Is Huawei a security threat? Seven experts weigh in.
Retrieved 31 March 2020, from https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/17/18264283/huawei-
security-threat-experts-china-spying-5g
Maizland, L., & Chatzky, A. (2020). Huawei: China’s Controversial Tech Giant. Retrieved 31
March 2020, from https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/huawei-chinas-controversial-tech-
giant

7RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Newman, L. (2020). The US Fears Huawei Because It Knows How Tempting Backdoors Are.
Retrieved 31 March 2020, from https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-backdoors-us-
crypto-ag/