Huawei says revenues down 29% last year due to sanctions

Chinese telecom giant Huawei said late last week its annual revenue had fallen by nearly a third from the previous year, as it continued to be weighed down by U.S. sanctions that have hit its smartphone sales.

Going into more details, the firm’s revenue for this year fell by 29 per cent year on year to $134.36 billion, said rotating chairman Guo Ping in an annual new year message.

“In 2021, despite all the trials and tribulations, we worked hard to create tangible value for our customers and local communities,” he said.

The economic and technological war between U.S. and China has put Huawei in the crossfire, after the administration of former president Donald Trump moved to cripple the company over concerns it could pose a cybersecurity and espionage threat.

“In 2021, despite all the trials and tribulations, we worked hard to create tangible value for our customers and local communities,” Guo said.

“We enhanced the quality and efficiency of our operations, and expect to round off the year with a total revenue of 634 billion yuan,” rotating chairman stressed.

He added that the telecom carrier segment had “remained stable” and “overall performance was in line with our forecasts.”

In addition, Huawei’s revenue has fallen in 2021 due in part to the offloading of its budget phone brand Honor, which was sold late last year.

It is worth mentioning that the United States has banned Huawei from acquiring crucial components such as microchips and forced it to create its own operating system by cutting it off from using Google’s Android operating system.

The giant company launched this month, a new folding phone and said 220 million Huawei devices were running its HarmonyOS system.

In October, the group said its January-September sales volume had fallen 32 percent, while a major complication for the company was solved this year with the return to China of chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, after a long diplomatic crisis with Canada when she spent nearly 3 years under house arrest on a US extradition warrant, which China said was motivated by politics.

The group is the world’s biggest supplier of telecoms network gear and was once a top-three smartphone producer along with Apple and Samsung. However, it has fallen well down the smartphone ranks owing to US pressure, in parallel with Huawei saying in October that its January-September sales volume had fallen 32 per cent.