By Li Panpan

Huawei’s rotating chairman Guo Ping acknowledged the slide in his company’s consumer business with difficulties caused by U.S. sanctions, especially with a shortage of mobile phone RF chips. But Huawei would increase strategic investment to survive.

Guo remarked at Huawei’s 2021 annual performance conference held on March 28.  It was announced at the conference that Huawei achieved global sales revenue of RMB 636.8 billion ($99.99 billion) and a net profit of RMB113.7 billion ($17.85 billion) in 2021, a year-on-year increase of 75.9%. Its R&D investment last year reached a record high of RMB142.7 billion ($22.41 billion). 

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s CFO who made her first appearance at the conference since her release from Canada, commented that Huawei is now smaller in scale, but has stronger profit-making and cashing-flowing capabilities. 

Guo Ping said, “Huawei now faces difficulty from unattainable advanced process technology. To survive we must increase our big strategy investment. We will actively seek breakthroughs on the system-level while encountering difficulties at certain technological points.”

“Solving the chip problem is a complicated and long process that requires patience. In the future, our chip solution may adopt a multi-core structure to improve chip performance. We are delighted to more companies join the market,” added Guo. 

“We are looking for mobile phone sustainability solutions. We have also expanded our business in wearables and whole-house intelligence, with rapid developments of more than 30% year on year. Wearable watches have won over 100 million customers,” said Guo.  

“We will continue to build the competitiveness of the ecosystem platform, empower partners and developers, and create a win-win situation,” said Guo.