Huawei has pulled itself out of crisis mode, says chairman

‘2023 will be the first year that we return to business as usual,’ says Chinese vendor Huawei’s Rotating Chairman.

Eric Xu, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, has published a bullish ‘new year message’ in which he says things are looking bright for the embattled vendor despite ongoing US led sanctions.

2022 apparently saw steady growth for its ICT infrastructure business, and the decline in its device business ‘has abated’. Xu also points to rapid growth in ‘digital power’ and Huawei Cloud, and successes in intelligent automotive components. All in all Huawei expects to round off the year with a total revenue of 636.9 billion yuan, which is in line with forecasts.

In order that 2023 does indeed turn out to be an ‘extraordinary year’ for Huawei, Xu laid out four things the firm must do. The first is to maintain heavy investment in R&D, which is something it doesn’t slouch on currently, and the second is to ‘secure victory through quality’ – which appears to be a fairly self-evident statement about the importance of providing decent products and services.

Xu says the firm also needs to ‘commit to progress and seize opportunities to grow the harvest’ (specifically calling out Huawei Cloud as the lynchpin of various growth strategies), and ‘press ahead with transformation to inject vitality into the organization and motivate everyone to forge ahead’ – which seems to be alluding primarily to some projects around staff and management training.

“In 2022, we successfully pulled ourselves out of crisis mode,” said Xu. “US restrictions are now our new normal, and we’re back to business as usual. It’s been all hands on deck for the past year, with every single member of the Huawei team working hard to navigate challenges and improve the quality of our operations.

“2023 will be the first year that we return to business as usual with external restrictions still in place. It will be a crucial year for us, so we need to actively drive progress, keep inspiring passion across the organization, and further hone our capabilities. We need to be proactive about improving the business environment and more effectively managing risks. This is the only way we can reach our business goals for 2023 and lay a solid foundation for Huawei’s continued survival and development.”

Nothing wrong with kicking off a new year with a bit of positive thinking, but while it sounds like Huawei has done a lot to mitigate the significant impacts of the bans imposed on its equipment sales in a number of western economies, while they remain in place they will continue to present a thorn in the side to its once commanding international export business.

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