Huawei’s revenue has continued to fall under the weight of US sanctions that have heavily impacted the company’s businesses globally.
The Chinese telecom giant said on Friday its annual revenue had fallen by nearly a third from the previous year, as it continued to be weighed down by US sanctions that have hit its smartphone sales.
In an annual New Year message, Huawei’s rotating chairman Guo Ping said the company’s revenue fell 29% year-on-year to 634 billion yuan ($99.5 billion).
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“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.”
He added that the telecom carrier segment had “remained stable” and “overall performance was in line with our forecasts.”
Huawei became a victim of the US-China trade, technology and political dispute, which was heightened during former President, Donald Trump’s administration. Concerned about the possible threat Chinese Huawei poses to its national security, the US has imposed multiple sanctions on the telecom vendor, greatly limiting its ability to lead the global 5G roll out and manufacture smartphones.
But in addition to US sanctions, APF noted that 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.
Huawei is not publicly listed, and the message did not give any other financial specifics.
Guo said the company was on a “bumpy, but rewarding” road, adding that 2022 will come with “its fair share of challenges.”
The US also pressured its allies to uphold many of its sanctions against Huawei, resulting in many western countries’ decision to halt 5G deployment with Huawei.
The embattled firm has been forced to quickly pivot into new business lines including enterprise computing, wearables and health tech, technology for intelligent vehicles, and software. Earlier this year, it announced plans to go into vehicle manufacturing, but that faces the same challenge.
As part of the sanctions, Google was ordered to cut Huawei off from its Android operating system, forcing the company to create its own operating system called HarmonyOS. Huawei was also barred from acquiring crucial components such as microchips, a decision which affects other Chinese entities.
This month, the company launched a new foldable phone and said 220 million Huawei devices were running its HarmonyOS system.
Owing to the US sanctions, Huawei has fallen from the tops where it used to rank among the top-three smartphone makers alongside Apple and Samsung. Its position as the world’s biggest supplier of telecoms network gear has also been dampened.
The company said in October that its January-September sales volume fell 32 percent. However, the Chinese government has been working to boost local chip production so as to help companies impacted by the US sanctions. Huawei also scored a win this year when the chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, who had been held in Canada on a US extradition warrant, was released. Meng spent nearly three years under house arrest, a situation which further complicated US-China political and technology relationship.
Meng was released in November following an agreement by US prosecutors under which fraud charges were to be suspended and eventually dropped. It is not clear how her release will help Huawei out of its present predicament.