April 29, 2022: -On Thursday, Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei announced that its first-quarter revenue decreased by almost 14% from a year ago, while its profit margin was over halved.

“Our consumer business was heavily impacted, and our infrastructure business experienced steady growth,” Ken Hu, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said. “In 2022, we still face a challenging and complicated business environment.”

The company is reporting 131 billion yuan in revenue for the first quarter. That’s down by 13.9% from the same period in the previous year and over 27% decline from the fourth quarter of 2021.

A first-quarter profit margin of 4.3% was less than half the 11.1% reported a year earlier.

Hu said the quarterly results were in line with the company’s expectations and that Huawei has increased its investment in research and development.

Huawei’s smartphone business has struggled under U.S. sanctions. The Trump administration put the company on a blocklist that restricts it from buying critical components such as advanced semiconductors from U.S. suppliers.

According to Counterpoint Research, smartphone sales in China across different brands fell by 14% in the first quarter from a year ago.

The report proved that Huawei logged the worst decline out of seven brands, ranked sixth by market share and with sales plunging by 64.2%. The company’s smartphone sales in China also fell by 12% from the prior quarter.

According to Counterpoint, Apple was the only other company on the list to post a quarter-on-quarter sales decline in China, down by 23%. Meanwhile, the iPhone maker’s China sales increased by 4.4% in the first quarter from a year ago.