Huawei vows to return to the smartphone ‘throne’ despite U.S. sanctions

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Huawei vows to return to the smartphone ‘throne’ despite U.S. sanctions crippling its business

• Huawei Chairman Guo Ping said in a Q&A with staff that the Chinese technology giant will return to the smartphone “throne.”
  
• Under the Trump administration, Huawei was put on an export blacklist and cut off from key technologies, namely advanced semiconductors needed for its smartphones.
  
• Revenue from Huawei’s consumer division plunged 47% year-on-year in the first half of 2021. The company was once No. 1 in the smartphone market, but has since dropped out of the top five.
  

GUANGZHOU, China — A Huawei executive said the Chinese technology giant will return to the “throne” of the smartphone industry even as the company continues to suffer the fallout from U.S. sanctions.


Under the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Huawei was dubbed a national security threat, put on an export blacklist and cut off from key technologies, namely advanced semiconductors needed for its smartphones.

Revenue from Huawei’s consumer division plunged 47% year-on-year in the first half of 2021. The company was once No. 1 in the smartphone market, but has since dropped out of the top five.

“The biggest difficulty for us at present is on mobile phones. We know that [to produce] phones with small size and low power consumption requires advanced technology. Huawei can do the design, but no one is able to help us to produce. We are stuck,” Huawei Chairman Guo Ping said in a Q&A with staff, according to a transcript seen by CNBC.

One of Huawei’s biggest issues is that Chinese chipmakers do not have the ability to make the cutting-edge semiconductors that the Shenzhen-headquartered company requires.

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