Business As Usual: China’s Huawei raked in $91.5 billion in revenue despite sanctions by US, and others

Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies shared an estimate on Friday that predicted that its 2022 revenue remained flat. This means that despite the increasing sanctions on China, and Huawei in particular, the decline in sales that Huawei and other Chinese companies had seen, has come to a halt. [caption id=“attachment_11906091” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Although nowhere near its peak of $122 billion in 2019, Huawei continues to rake in big money, despite the sanctions imposed by the US and trade embargoes by several other countries. Image Credit: AFP[/caption] In fact, Huawei’s sales for this year grew by only 0.02 per cent. And, despite rotating chairman Eric Xu struck an upbeat tone in the company’s annual New Year’s letter, where he revealed the figure. “US restrictions are now our new normal, and we’re back to business as usual,” Xu wrote in the letter that was addressed to staff and released to the media. Revenue for the year is expected to be 636.9 billion yuan or $91.53 billion, according to Xu. That represents a tiny increase from 2021, when revenue hit 636.8 billion yuan, and marked a 30 per cent year-on-year sales decline, as the US-issued sanctions on the company took effect. The timing and contents of Xu’s letter were a little unusual. First, the letter or the issued statements made no mention of Huawei’s profitability, whether it had grown or declices. Secondly, the company typically discloses its full annual results in the following year’s first quarter, which means on this particular occasion, they have announced their results pre-emptively.   Things haven’t gone completely back to normal for Huawei though. Revenue for 2022 still remained well below the company’s record of $122 billion in 2019. Back in 2018-2019, the company was at its peak as the top Android smartphone vendor globally.     In 2019, the US administration led by President Trump, imposed a trade ban on Huawei, citing national security concerns, which barred the company from using Google’s Android operating system for its new smartphones. Huawei basically got cut off from using some seriously other critical and crucial technologies that originated in the US.