Huawei dangles $70 million co-marketing carrot at partners

There’s nothing like a juicy bit of co-marketing to keep partners sweet so Huawei has is apportioning a big chunk of its new partner programme to just that.

The announcement was made at Huawei’s big partner-fest – Huawei Connect 2017 – and is part of a $250 million partner programme aimed vendors, SIs and service providers of all kinds. As with all partner programmes the aim of this is to encourage the channel to incorporate Huawei stuff into its solutions and thus flog some of it.

Co-marketing involves the larger company contributing to the marketing of these partner solutions, often in the form of cold, hard cash. Perhaps the most famous such campaign was ‘Intel Inside’ featuring that little tune, which helped Intel maintain a dominant position in PC chips. The offer of financial help is presumably an attractive lure for some partners and the $70 million Huawei has set aside for this is not insubstantial.

“Companies are investing in digital transformation,” said Albert Liu, President of Partners and Alliances at Huawei. “Huawei and our partners are uniquely positioned to assist them to navigate this process. Huawei’s innovative products and solutions provide extensive opportunities for our partners. Now the Huawei Solution Partner Program provides a simpler path for partners to succeed and grow.”

The initiative announced at the event centralises partner programmes previously run by separate business groups. Huawei currently has over 1,000 partners, so the partner budget needs to be fairly substantial. There are also 16 Huawei OpenLabs where everyone can get together and have a great big partner party with Huawei presumably sticking a few quid behind the bar, and by 2020 there will be eight more.