Huawei Technologies today revealed that the company’s full-year revenue would jump 18 percent to 850 billion yuan (~$121.7 billion). While this is lower than the earlier projection, it is nonetheless impressive given that the company has been backlisted from doing business with any of the US-based firms without permission from the government.
The company’s chairman Eric Xu revealed the numbers in a New Year’s message to employees and customers in which he also forecasted 2020 to be a “difficult year’. He said that the company was unlikely to grow as rapidly as it did in the first half of this year.
The 18 percent revenue growth in 2019 is less than 2018, when Huawei’s annual revenue rose 19.5 percent. The company hasn’t provided the fourth-quarter figures but calculations based on previous statements indicate that the revenue in the quarter to end on December 31st rose to 239.2 billion yuan ($23.28 billion).
This represents growth of 3.9 percent from a year earlier and slower than the 27 percent increase it reported in the third quarter. The company also revealed that it shipped 240 million smartphones this year, reporting 20 percent increase from 2018.
Eric Xu acknowledged that Huawei is confronting a “strategic and long-term” campaign against its business by the U.S. government. He added that if this persists, it would create even more “difficult” environment for the company to “survive and thrive.”
However, he added that in 2020, the company would “go all out” to build its Huawei Mobile Services ecosystem, which comprises services such as cloud storage and an app gallery. He described this upcoming service as “the foundation of our ability to sell smart devices in markets outside China”.
Earlier this year, in May, the U.S. government banned Huawei in the country claiming that its equipment pose national security risks because they could be used by the Chinese government to spy on users. While U.S. has not provided any proof to back the claim, Huawei has repeatedly denied that its products are a security threat.
