Ren Zhengfei, founder and chief executive of Huawei Technologies, said he had not expected such a ferocious US attack on the company and that the move to add the world’s largest telecommunications equipment vendor to a US trade blacklist was expected to wipe out US$30 billion of sales growth.
Acknowledging for the first time the likely impact on Huawei of US action, Ren said on Monday that total revenue was now expected to remain stagnant at around the US$100 billion level in 2019 and 2020. He also said overseas smartphone sales had dropped 40 per cent, without specifying the time period.