Posted on Dec. 2021 at 9:58Updated Dec. 2021 at 16:07
A big blow for Huawei. The Chinese telecoms giant unveiled on Friday a turnover for 2021 down by nearly a third over one year. The group has been penalized, since 2019, by unprecedented American sanctions.
From January to December, the group’s turnover fell 29%, to 634 billion yuan (87 billion euros), according to figures communicated by its chairman in office Guo Ping, in a message from Nouvel. year.
A year earlier during this period, Huawei had sold 891.4 billion yuan of goods and services (123 billion euros). A figure then up 4%. The performance of its activities in China had notably enabled the group to stay afloat, despite US sanctions and the Covid pandemic.
“2022 will have its share of challenges”
The situation may not immediately become clearer for the telecoms giant. “2022 will have its share of challenges,” Guo Ping warned. The CEO cites in particular “an unpredictable economic situation, the politicization of technological issues and a growing movement in favor of de-globalization”.
Huawei has been at the center of the Sino-American rivalry for several years, against the backdrop of a trade and technological war between the two leading world powers. The group found itself in the crosshairs of the former Trump administration, which accused it, without providing any evidence, of potential espionage for the benefit of Beijing. In 2019, Washington had blacklisted the group to prevent it from acquiring American technologies, essential to its products. Restrictions maintained by the Biden administration.
As the world’s leading supplier of network and telecom equipment, Huawei launched in 2003 in the cell phone niche. It was once one of the three main smartphone manufacturers in the world, along with the South Korean Samsung and the American Apple. And it briefly held the number one spot, boosted by Chinese demand and sales in emerging markets.
Pressures on the 5G front
But the US sanctions, which in particular cut the company from global supply chains for components, has plunged its smartphone branch into uncertainty. Huawei separated at the end of 2020 from Honor, its entry-level smartphone brand. And because of the sanctions, he had to give up using the American Android system, which equips the vast majority of smartphones in the world.
The firm is also facing pressure on the 5G technology front, the deployment of which is accelerating. The Trump administration had urged its allies to give up Huawei to equip their 5G network, arguing that Beijing could use the Chinese company to monitor a country’s communications and data traffic.