US Ban did not harm Huawei

Since May of last year, Google is no longer allowed to supply new Huawei smartphones with software. This has not harmed Huawei's boisterous growth, as the annual report for 2019 shows.

In mid-May 2019, US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in telecommunications and prohibited US companies from doing business with "enemy companies". The state of emergency decree was primarily aimed at Huawei, who were accused of using their technology to carry out espionage. Huawei was thus excluded from the expansion of the 5G infrastructure, but Google was also no longer allowed to supply apps such as GMail, Maps and the Play Store for the new smartphones. Huawei could only use those parts of the Android operating system that were open source and has since been driving his own operating system ArkOS.

Huawei's annual report published this week does not reflect the US ban, on the contrary: Huawei achieved a worldwide annual turnover of 858.8 billion CNY (123 billion US dollars), which represents an increase of 19.1% compared to 2018. Net profit was CNY 62.7 billion (US$9 billion) and cash flow from operating activities increased by 22.4% year-on-year to CNY 91.4 billion (US$13.1 billion). Huawei reinvested in research and development 15.3% of its annual sales of 2019 or CNY 131.7 billion (US$18.9 billion). This brings the company's total investment in R&D over the past decade to more than CNY 600 billion (USD 86 billion).

5G infrastructure in 50 countries

A mainstay of Huawei's business is its business with network operators. Huawei's 5G base stations are deployed in over 50 countries and regions. In 2019, the carrier business generated revenues of CNY 296.7 billion (US$42.5 billion), an increase of 3.8% compared to the previous year.

The smartphone business also showed robust growth with 240 million units delivered in 2019. Although Huawei did not succeed in ousting Samsung from the number one position as the world's strongest smartphone manufacturer (21% market share), the company continued to hold on to its second place with 17% market share, ahead of Apple (14%). From the consumer business, Huawei achieved sales of CNY 467.3 billion ($66.9) in 2019, an increase of 34.0% over the previous year.