Huawei Chairman Liang Hua told reporters on Tuesday that despite blacklisting the Chinese tech giant, the US had failed to hinder the roll-out of its 5G products.
He also emphasised that despite being put on the US blacklist, its global sales have increased 23.2 percent in the past six months to 401.3 billion yuan ($58.3 billion), as compared to 2018’s full-year growth rate of 19.5 percent.
“Given the foundation we laid in the first half of the year, we continue to see growth even after we were added to the entity list. In a way, the US government's pressure on Huawei has helped us understand our objectives better,” he pointed out.
He added, however, that all this doesn’t mean that Huawei doesn’t “have difficulties ahead” or that they "won’t affect the pace of our growth in the short term”.
Separately, Liang said that Huawei prefers to use the Android operating system (OS) in its smartphones and hopes that the US will eventually give permission for it, otherwise the company will have to develop “its own operating system”.
Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei, for his part, earlier stressed that “it's not a difficult task to come up with a new OS, but it's difficult to build up an ecosystem for that”.
His remarks came after Google restricted Huawei's use of its Android OS in May following the US Commerce Department’s statement earlier that month that it was adding Huawei Technologies Co and 70 affiliates to its so-called “Entity List”.
The move banned Huawei from acquiring components and technology from American firms without prior US government approval, under the pretext that the equipment made by the company poses a national security risk.
President Donald Trump moved to weaken the crackdown in late June when he tweeted that he had agreed to allow Huawei to buy products from US high tech companies which “will not impact our national security”.
White House economic aide Larry Kudlow at the same time noted that the move was “not a general amnesty” and that Huawei would remain on the Entity List, “where there are serious export controls”.
Washington suspects that the Chinese tech giant is helping Beijing steal commercial secrets and collect personal data, allegations both Huawei and Chinese authorities deny. A number of European countries have, meanwhile, signalled their readiness to continue cooperating with Huawei despite the US crackdown.
