What Huawei didn’t say in its ‘robust’ half-year results –
Summary
The telecom equipment and smartphone giant announced on Tuesday that its revenue grew 23.2% to reach 401.3 billion yuan ($58.31 million) in the first half of 2019 despite all the trade restrictions the U.S. slapped on it. Google stopped providing certain portions of Android services such as software updates to Huawei in compliance with U.S. trade rules. To mitigate the effect of trade bans, Huawei said it’s developing its own operating system (although it later claimed the OS is primarily for industrial use) and core chips, but these backup promises may take some time to materialize. In other words, being on the U.S.’s entity list — a ban that prevents American companies from doing business with Huawei — is putting a real squeeze on the Chinese firm. Huawei chairman Liang Hua (pictured above) acknowledged the firm faces “difficulties ahead” but said the company is “fully confident in what the future holds,” he said today in a statement.
