US sanctions on Huawei hit chip supply and growth, exec says

 A Huawei executive says that recent U.S. sanctions against company have caused a short of computer chips for company, hurting growth of its smartphone business.

Richard Yu, president of Huawei Techlogies’ consumer business, said at a company conference for developers on Thursday that company has still mand to gain a 51% market share in Chinese smartphone industry.

U.S. has imposed various sanctions on Huawei, citing national security concerns. latest, ordered in August, restrict foreign semiconductor companes from selling chips to Huawei that are produced using American techlogy.

“Even after this third blow, we still mand to achieve growth,” said Yu, who ackwledged that growth had been impacted over last month.

In May, U.S. barred chipmakers that use U.S. techlogy and software to design chips from selling to Shenzhen-based company without a license.

A year earlier, U.S. government put company on its trade blacklist, banning Huawei from doing business with U.S. companies after Trump administration said Huawei was a national security threat.

U.S. alleges that Huawei could conduct intelligence for Chinese government and has urged its allies to exclude Huawei from its telecommunications networks. Huawei has vehemently denied se accusations.

This trade blacklist cut Huawei off from suppliers such as Google, which had supplied Huawei smartphones with Android operating system and Google Mobile Services, such as Gmail and YouTube. Huawei n developed its own Huawei Mobile Services, including an app store, that it has rolled out for newer smartphone models.

Despite troubles with Washington, in 2019 Huawei shipped over 240 million phones globally, and was second biggest smartphone maker in world. In first half of 2020, company generated revenues of 434 billion yuan (about $63 billion), up 13.1% from same period a year earlier.

Yu said company plans to make its proprietary operating system HarmonyOS available to devices including its smartphones, some of which still operate on Android system. Earlier, company had said HarmonyOS was meant for devices such as smartwatches and TVs, among ors.