Huawei revenue drops 29% as its consumer growth engine stutters

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies saw its revenue drop by almost a third in the first half of 2021, with U.S. sanctions hobbling its once-dominant handset business and new business areas still in their early stages.

The company generated revenue of 320.4 billion yuan ($49.56 billion), it said on Friday.

The biggest drop came from Huawei’s consumer business group, which includes handsets, where revenue fell 47% to 135.7 billion yuan.

It eked out a 0.6 percentage point rise in its net profit margin to 9.8%, largely due to efficiency improvements, a company spokesman said.

In 2019 former U.S. President Donald Trump put Huawei on an export blacklist and barred it from accessing critical technology of U.S. origin, affecting its ability to design its own chips and source components from outside vendors.