Huawei CEO called Apple a ‘great company’ and its founder Steve Jobs a ‘super-great man’

Apple a “great company” and its founder Steve Jobs a “great man,” the company’s founder and CEO, Ren Zhengfei, told CNBC.

“Mr. Jobs was great not because he created Apple, but because he created an era, the mobile internet era,” Ren told CNBC. “Saying that he was great is an understatement. I think he was super-great.”

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CEO Ren recalled a story about his youngest daughter Annabel Yao from 2011, the year Jobs died.

“When he passed away, I was on a vacation in the mountains with my family,” Ren said. “My younger daughter is a fan of Mr. Jobs, so she proposed that we stop for a moment of silence to mourn him, and we did.”

Ren admitted the company made mistakes in its smartphone strategy but says it learned from them.

“We set prices based on our costs, which were relatively low. Our costs were low for two reasons. First, as our technology advanced rapidly, we managed to bring down the costs of our products. Second, thanks to the Western management approaches we brought in, our operational costs were also kept low,” he said.

“As a result,” he added, “we set our prices at a relatively low level, which made it hard for Western companies to compete with us. We have reflected on this a lot.”

“We have raised our prices and now many people think Huawei is expensive,” he added.