Huawei’s annual sales fell 12.2 and 24.5 percent in Europe and US
Huawei achieved slightly more turnover last year than a year earlier, but turnover from sales in Europe and the United States fell sharply. According to Huawei, this is due to the American sanctions against the Chinese company.
Huawei’s global annual sales amounted to 891.4 billion Chinese yuan. Converted that is about 116 billion euros. That is an increase of 3.8 percent compared to last year, but that is due to good sales in China. Turnover fell in Europe and the United States.
In 2019, the US government imposed sanctions against Huawei, which means that the Chinese manufacturer can no longer install Google services on its smartphones. In 2019, this did not yet lead to a drop in turnover in Europe and the US, but this was the case last year. “Due to the unfair sanctions imposed by the US, smartphone sales have declined,” said Huawei CEO Ken Hu when presenting the figures.
Consumer sales totaled 482.9 billion yuan, up 3.3 percent from a year earlier. According to Huawei, by the end of 2020, there were more than one billion “Huawei connected devices” in circulation worldwide and the number of Huawei smartphone users was more than 730 million. The company does not say how many smartphones Huawei has delivered in 2020. According to market researcher Gartner, Huawei delivered 183 million smartphones in 2020, compared to 241 million a year earlier.
The carrier business, the business unit with which Huawei works on 5G networks, among other things, achieved an annual turnover of 302.6 billion yuan, an increase of 0.2 percent. According to Huawei, the company is involved in more than 3,000 5G projects worldwide.
In the corporate sector, which includes Huawei Cloud, sales rose 23 percent to 100.3 billion yuan. Under the line, Huawei made a profit of 64.6 billion yuan last year, converted about 8.4 billion euros.
No electric cars from Huawei
Huawei explains further in a promotional video about the annual figures that the company will not make electric cars. There were rumors about this and Huawei has previously set up a department for autonomous driving, but the brand wants to continue to focus on supplying parts and systems for cars, instead of developing them itself. Competitor Xiaomi announced this week that it is working on electric cars.
Three hundred million HarmonyOS devices by 2021
Huawei expects 300 million devices to appear with its HarmonyOS operating system this year. The company emphasizes that this is not just a replacement for Android, but an OS for all kinds of smart devices. In China, there are already home appliance manufacturers that use HarmonyOS in their hardware.