Huawei wheels out X Labs brainbox farm for wireless industry

GMBBF2016 Huawei rotating co-CEO Ken Hu today announced the company’s new X Labs initiative, which is aimed at helping stimulate the inevitable “ecosystem” for the wireless comms market.

The spinning top man - a one-time chief marketing and innovation officer for the Chinese tech firm - introduced the initiative in his opening speech at Huawei’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum being held in Tokyo.

X Labs is split into three streams: mLab, for consumer-focused apps and tech; hLab, for home wireless networking ideas; vlab, for industry verticals; and XICs (X Labs Innovation Centres) for “collaboration with industry partners”.

“It is a new platform that will bring together carriers, technology providers, and vertical industry partners to jointly explore future use cases for mobile applications, promote innovation in business and technology, and to promote an open ecosystem,” Hu said.

mLab will focus on the well-trodden path to better commercialisation of consumer video and “immersive experiences”. hLab will look at how to exploit better home broadband connections to offer products such as home security, home robots and the like.

vLab, meanwhile, seems to be a speculative play aimed at vertical industries looking to integrate through the familiar old phrase of “digital transformation”. Huawei suggests this could include things such as ultra-long distance drone flights and co-ordination between industrial robots.

Four of the X Labs will be set up around the world, at locations in North America, Germany, Japan and China.

Huawei’s own page about X Labs goes into brief but lucid detail about the initiative. ®