As Huawei finds itself at the center of an international drama, the Chinese tech giant is unveiling a new AI-powered database in what one analyst describes as the “first salvo in the US-China database wars.”

Huawei on Wednesday will introduce what it says is “the world’s first AI-native database,” the company said in an email inviting media to the launch.

The product marks the company’s “move from focusing on hardware business only to hardware + software ones,” Huawei said, adding the system will run on ARM chips — a rival to those made by Intel, and the dominant standard in smartphones — and will be the “the world’s first ARM-based enterprise database system.”

The Huawei database is a win for chipmaker ARM. A major player in the mobile microprocessor market, ARM is working to expand in the enterprise tech arena, including data center hardware like servers, which is dominated by Intel.

“This is legitimate competition,” Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies Inc. told Business Insider. “But most likely it will not have a major impact on Intel, unless Huawei gains large backing for their solution.”

The move highlights Huawei’s increasingly aggressive positioning in key areas of tech where it’s already going head- to-head with US giants such as Cisco and Apple.

The company is ranked second place behind Cisco, in the telecom service provider router and Ethernet switch markets, according to IDC. Recently, it passed Apple as the world’s second-biggest smartphone vendor behind Samsung…….more here