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Huawei
TechTech leaders and founders

Huawei CEO says he did not expect such a ferocious, large-scale US attack on the Chinese telecoms giant

  • The Chinese company is unlikely to see much revenue growth with total sales expected to remain at around the US$100 billion level in 2019 and 2020

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Ren Zhengfei said on Monday that total revenue was now expected to remain stagnant at around the US$100 billion level. Photo: Xinhua
Li Taoin Shenzhen
Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive of Huawei Technologies, said he had not expected such a ferocious US attack on the company and that the move to add the world’s largest telecommunications equipment vendor to a US trade blacklist was expected to wipe out US$30 billion of sales growth.
Acknowledging for the first time the likely impact on Huawei of US action, Ren said on Monday that total revenue was now expected to remain stagnant at around the US$100 billion level in 2019 and 2020. He also said overseas smartphone sales had dropped 40 per cent, without specifying the time period.

“We did not expect that the US would attack us with such determination and on such a large scale,” he said during a panel discussion at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen. “We made some preparations, such as for the core business part, but we have been unable to protect some of the secondary parts [of our business].”

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Ren was speaking during an open panel discussion called “A coffee with Ren”, in which Huawei’s founder held a wide-ranging talk with two American technologists, George Gilder and Nicholas Negroponte. Although speaking in a slightly softer tone than his usual direct style, Ren nevertheless remained upbeat about Huawei’s long-term future.

“After all this, we will become even stronger,” he said. “We are the birds that will never die.”

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