Huawei's revenue loss slows down amid Cloud push

Shenzhen, Aug 12

Chinese conglomerate Huawei on Friday posted nearly 6 per cent loss in revenue for the first six months of the year and its device business, which includes smartphones, fell 25.4 per cent amid US sanctions on chip technology.

Huawei generated 301.6 billion Yuan ($44.7 billion) in revenue, with a net profit margin of 5 per cent, which was "in line with the forecast" and the pace of revenue loss slowed down as the company doubled down on its Cloud business.

"While our device business was heavily impacted, our information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure business maintained steady growth," said Ken Hu, Huawei's Rotating Chairman.

"Moving forward, we will harness trends in digitalisation and decarbonisation to keep creating value for our customers and partners, and secure quality development," he said in a statement

The network gear business, which sells to telecommunications network operators, grew 4.24 per cent to 142.7 billion yuan (about $21 billion).

The cloud business has achieved "healthy" sales in the first half of 2022, said William Dong, president of Huawei Cloud Marketing.

"Profitability is not a priority for us. We will continue to increase our investment in artificial intelligence and other technologies that can help our clients improve efficiency," said Dong.

In a bid to take on tech giant Google's Android operating system amid the ongoing US sanctions, Huawei late last month unveiled an upgraded version of its own operating system -- HarmonyOS 3.

The third-generation operating system is designed to provide a more seamless experience across devices, including smartphones, tablets, printers, cars and smart home devices such as televisions.

The company said that HarmonyOS 3 will be available to more devices starting in September.

Huawei debuted the original HarmonyOS in August 2019, three months after the firm was added to US's trade blacklist, preventing it from buying software, chips and other technologies from US companies.

Soon after the ban was announced, Google stopped providing its suite of mobile software services to Huawei.