Its 2021 income got here in at 636.8 billion yuan ($100.01 billion), down from 891.4 billion yuan in 2020. Its internet income, nonetheless, climbed 75.9% to 113.7 billion ($17.86 billion), Huawei mentioned Monday. Money circulate from working actions grew to 59.7 billion yuan ($9.38 billion).
At a media briefing, rotating chairman Guo Ping mentioned its provider enterprise was “secure” whereas the enterprise enterprise was seeing “regular development”. Its client enterprise had moved into “new domains”, he mentioned.
Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, talking in an official occasion for the primary time since her return from Canada, mentioned on the briefing that the corporate was “extra able to coping with uncertainty” on the again of rising income and money flows, regardless of a drop in its 2021 income.
The announcement confirmed forecast warnings Guo alluded to final December in his new yr message to workers. He had pointed to an unpredictable enterprise atmosphere, “politicisation of technology“, and rising deglobalisation as “critical challenges” the corporate confronted.
In an e mail interview with ZDNet, Huawei executives pointed to “an enormous decline” in its smartphone enterprise as the important thing issue behind the drop in total income.
Huawei’s president of machine enterprise Richard Yu mentioned US sanctions wouldn’t cease the Chinese language vendor from in search of innovation. Noting that these difficult occasions finally would move, Yu mentioned Huawei would proceed to drive buyer expertise round 5 key areas together with sensible dwelling, sensible mobility, and leisure.
The corporate up to now yr had seemed to diversify its product portfolio, as a part of efforts to buffer dwindling smartphone gross sales amidst ongoing US trade bans. Final June, it launched an replace of its cellular working system, HarmonyOS 2, throughout 100 of its units in China, together with smartphones, sensible watches, and tablets. Huawei beforehand tapped Android because the OS for its smartphones, however was pressured to search for different platforms when US trade sanctions meant Google had to pull back Huawei’s access to its cellular apps and platform.
Pulling apart the drop in smartphone gross sales, Huawei instructed ZDNet its “+8” device business–comprising related merchandise–clocked a gross sales development of greater than 30% final yr. This unit encompassed units akin to wearables and sensible screens.
The corporate spokesperson added that it additionally continued to introduce smartphones final yr, together with its fourth foldable providing Huawei P50 Pocket.
In accordance with Huawei, gross sales exterior of China dropped throughout the board. It famous that abroad gross sales accounted for greater than half of its provider enterprise income final yr.
Its improve in internet income was fuelled by the sale of its Honor and server companies, although, Huawei instructed ZDNet income had been partly pushed by “improved product portfolios” and higher efficiencies from its operations.
The seller reportedly bought its x86 server enterprise, additionally as a result of US commerce sanctions, to Henan Data Trade Funding final November.
When requested, Huawei declined to supply particulars, together with precise internet income, across the sale of its Honor and server companies. The corporate spokesperson, nonetheless, famous that its 2021 internet income excluding gross sales proceeds from the 2 companies nonetheless had been larger than that of 2020.
Elaborating on its “improved product choices”, the Chinese language tech big mentioned it had pumped extra funding into its software program enterprise and established “domain-specific subsidiaries”, akin to its digital power business. Inner groups, together with in coal mining and transport, additionally had been built-in to streamline administration chains and velocity up response to clients’ wants.
Huawei additional famous that its enterprise enterprise grew final yr, with new enterprise segments that included cloud and digital power registering greater than 30% development. Whereas requested, the seller mentioned it didn’t separate income figures for its cloud and digital energy companies.
In accordance with Huawei’s cloud CEO Zhang Pingan, its cloud unit had a community of greater than 2.3 million builders, 14,000 consulting companions, and 6,000 know-how companions. Collectively, they supported greater than 4,500 cloud merchandise.
Huawei at present operates 61 availability zones throughout 27 areas, comprising 170 markets. Its digital energy enterprise at present runs 12 analysis centres in varied websites in China, Asia-Pacific, and Europe.
Huawei’s rotating chairman Eric Xu mentioned: “Once we determined to broaden new enterprise domains, we had already totally assessed our skill to safe chip provides. If we didn’t really feel we might clear up this downside, we wouldn’t have made such choices within the first place.”
Pivoting to maneuver with carbon neutrality developments
The corporate spokesperson instructed ZDNet that Huawei would proceed to “readjust” its enterprise portfolio in step with digitalisation and carbon neutrality developments, so it might meet buyer necessities.
“We are going to give attention to connectivity, computing, units, clever automotive parts, cloud, and digital energy, and work to create thriving OpenHarmony, openEuler, and MindSpore ecosystems,” he mentioned, including that it might work with companions to ship these choices to clients.
The Chinese language vendor additionally would put money into three key areas round system structure optimisation, software program efficiency enchancment, and “theoretical exploration”. Particularly, it might search out breakthroughs in applied sciences that it had problem accessing, the spokesperson mentioned.
Noting that it had been denied entry to superior course of strategies as a result of commerce sanctions, Huawei mentioned it might make investments extra closely in refactoring primary scientific concept, structure, and software program. These included making use of photonic and digital synergy to communications techniques, designing peer-to-peer architectures, and driving larger efficiency and scalability in software program. Such new theories and applied sciences might embody next-generation MIMO (a number of enter/output) and wi-fi synthetic intelligence (AI).
Particularly, it aimed to hit or exceed Shannon’s Restrict, which referred to the best fee of error-free knowledge that might be theoretically transmitted over a communication channel, taking into account random switch error and noise ranges.
Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei famous that it was investing in 6G analysis and focusing on patents within the next-generation mobile know-how. “We should not wait till 6G turns into viable, as ready would impose constraints on us resulting from an absence of patents,” Ren mentioned.
The corporate runs 86 know-how labs worldwide in addition to 23 analysis and growth (R&D) amenities in Europe. It declined to disclose what number of R&D centres it had globally.
It mentioned its R&D and product reengineering funding climbed by 30% year-on-year. Huawei mentioned it spent 142.7 billion yuan ($22.41 billion) on R&D final yr, which accounted for 22.4% of its total income and pushed its 10-year expenditure to 845 billion yuan.