Huawei Technologies is planning major job cut in the United States as the Chinese telecoms equipment maker is unable to manage business in the wake of its U.S. blacklisting, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Earlier, Huawei had revealed that the technology company’s revenue will be around $100 billion in 2019 and 2020 as against the previous target of $135 billion in 2019. Huawei is the largest telecom network maker and second largest smartphone maker in the world.
The job cut is expected to affect jobs at Huawei’s US-based research and development subsidiary Futurewei Technologies. Futurewei employs about 850 people in research labs across the U.S., including in Texas, California and Washington state.
Huawei did not comment on the job cut. Huawei is expected to announce its revenue for the first half of 2019 — on July 30. The financial performance during the first half will be giving some indication on the impact of the US restrictions on the technology giant from China.
Huawei’s roughly 1,500 employees in the U.S. mainly handle equipment sales to rural wireless carriers across the country, while others do research for an array of technologies at Futurewei. Huawei currently employs more than 180,000 people world-wide.
Earlier media reports indicated that rural telecom operators in the United States are unable to find a replacement for Huawei network because equipment from Nokia and Ericsson are too expensive.
The report said the layoffs could be in the hundreds. Huawei’s Chinese employees in the United States were being given an option to return home and stay with the company.
Huawei has already notified some employees about their dismissal, while more planned job cuts could be announced soon.
After the United States Commerce Department decided to put Huawei on its entity list, Futurewei employees have faced restrictions to communicate with their colleagues in Huawei’s home offices located in China.
Last week, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. government would issue licenses to companies seeking to sell goods to Huawei where there was no threat to national security. But there was lack of clarity on the components that will not impact the security of the United States.
