Huawei Chairman sends year-end message to employees: Next year will be very difficult, 10% of the weakest manager will be fired

Huawei Corporation has issued a warning about the slowdown in growth in the new year and the possibility of cutting jobs of poor middle-class managers in 2020 in the context that it faces US sanctions.

“2020 will be a difficult year for us,” Eric Xu, the president of the company, said in a letter to all employees at the end of the year, which was announced today.

The message comes at the start of a new year 2020 – an important year to test whether the company can compete in the 5G field globally as well as retain their customers under the pressure of American or not.

The company will remain on the US blacklist – prohibited from using US technologies. Therefore, Chairman Xu asserted that: “We will not grow as fast as before in the first half of 2019”.

The Washington side is expected to continue to make it difficult for the Chinese tech conglomerate in the long run and create “a challenging environment for Huawei to survive and thrive”.

In response, the world’s second-largest smartphone maker will continue to eliminate weak businesses and inefficient management levels.

“We will eliminate ineffective managers faster. Each year, the top 10% bottom-down managers’ performance will be eliminated. Any group that does not contribute to increasing the competitiveness of the or improving strategic support and services will be merged or contracted. ”

Xu said the company will prioritize securing supply chains and building its own mobile operating system, Huawei Mobile Servies, designed to replace many popular applications such as Google Maps, YouTube and Gmail.

Local media reported that Washington plans to issue a stronger ban for Huawei in 2020.

The United States has also urged allies like the United Kingdom to ban Huawei from supplying 5G network equipment. Huawei, on the other hand, still shows the strength of strong U.S. sanctions starting in May. Its revenue increased 18% to 850 billion yuan ($ 121 billion) in 2019 – comparable to that of the U.S. Google’s parent company is Alphabet – despite its initial goal of $ 125 billion – $ 130 billion.

Although Washington warns about safety risks with Huawei’s 5G equipment – it still earns more than 60 contracts worldwide, nearly half of which are from Europe. Ericsson – the company’s biggest competitor – says it has 78 contracts and deals with local suppliers.

Huawei’s smartphone segment became the largest revenue contributor in the second half of this year. They delivered 240 million units in the whole of 2019, up 16.5% from 206 million units last year. The company is expected to maintain its position on Apple and behind only Samsung.

However, Huawei has not achieved its goal of surpassing Samsung to become a leader this year. The U.S. ban on the use of Google’s Android operating system has severely affected overseas smartphone sales.

The company has developed its own operating system to protect the phone business. “In 2020, we need to do everything to build the HMS ecosystem. To ensure that we can still sell phones in foreign markets.”

Huawei also focused on attracting new hardware suppliers outside the US – in an effort that President Xu called a “race against time”.

“We have to increase the diversity of our supply chains to ensure safety. Any risk that could endanger the company’s business must be seen as vital.”

Huawei has increased the number of employees to 194,000 this year from 180,000. In particular, there are about 3,500 foreign employees in 2019.