Beijing | Huawei on Wednesday announced a 16.5% year-on-year drop in first-quarter revenue, while the Chinese telecoms giant remains penalized by US sanctions.
“2021 will be another difficult year” for Huawei, warned in a statement the current president of the group, Eric Xu.
Huawei posted first-quarter revenue of 152.2 billion yuan (19.4 billion euros).
The group based in Shenzhen (southern China) 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.
Huawei had 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.
Consequence: in 2019 the United States placed the group on a blacklist in order to prevent it from acquiring “made in USA” technologies, in particular chips, which are essential to its products.
“Whatever challenges we face, we will remain resilient. Not just to survive, but to last, ”Mr. Xu promised.
The firm, world leader in 5G equipment, a new standard in mobile technologies set to revolutionize the internet, is also facing increasing pressure on this front.
The Trump administration hammered that Chinese intelligence could use Huawei equipment to monitor a country’s communications and data traffic.
In February, the founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei, however wanted to reassure on the “survival” of the group, but called the Biden administration to “a policy of openness” after the blows of the Trump era.
Pressure from Washington weighed on Huawei’s results last year. Unlike 2019, the group has not released in detail the number of phones it sold last year.