SHENZHEN, China (Reuters) – China’s Huawei Technology will see revenue from its smartphone business drop by at least $30-40 billion this year as the company continues to grapple with U.S. restrictions on its supply chain, its rotating chairman Eric Xu said.
While the firm has been “getting used to U.S. sanctions” imposed on it since 2019, its new 5G related business areas cannot offset the losses from the handset business, Xu said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump put Huawei on an export blacklist in 2019 and barred it from accessing critical U.S.-origin technology, impeding its ability to design its own chips and source components from outside vendors.
Xu said his “biggest hope” for the company is that it will still exist in five to ten years.
While China’s efforts to develop its semiconductor industry have shown “quite encouraging results”, addressing Huawei’s supply chain challenges will take a long time, he said.
The company has been looking for new areas for growth such as 5G and AI-based infrastructure upgrades to airports and mines. China will be a world leader in applying 5G technology in the next few years, Xu said.
(Reporting by David Kirton; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
