Huawei reports biggest ever revenue drop

Decline comes as US sanctions force it to sell chunk of its business

SHENZHEN:

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies reported its biggest ever revenue drop in the first half of 2021, after US sanctions drove it to sell a chunk of its once-dominant handset business and before new growth areas have fully matured.

The company generated revenue of 320.4 billion yuan ($49.56 billion), it said.

The biggest decline came from Huawei’s consumer business group, which includes handsets, where revenue fell 47% to 135.7 billion yuan. It eked out a 0.6 percentage point rise in its net profit margin to 9.8%, largely due to efficiency improvements, a company spokesperson said.

Read Huawei reports biggest drop in revenue as its consumer growth engine stutters

In 2019, former US president Donald Trump put Huawei on an export blacklist and barred it from accessing critical technology of US origin, affecting its ability to design its own chips and source components from outside vendors.

The sanctions hobbled Huawei’s handset business, with the company dropping out of the top five vendors in China for the first time in more than seven years in the second quarter, shipping 6.4 million units, according to consultancy Canalys. That compares with 27.4 million handsets shipped in China in Q2 2020.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2021.

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