• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 2, 2020

Likely lifting the spirits of Apple and other U.S. phone makers, Huawei just issued a subdued 2020 earnings forecast.

“It’s going to be a difficult year for us,” Eric Xu, chairman of the Chinese telecommunications giant, admits in a new statement.

Putting Huawei’s position in the starkest terms, Xu says of 2020: “Survival will be our first priority.”

Huawei’s gloomy outlook has nothing to do with hardware design, or marketing strategy. Rather, it’s reeling from the U.S. government’s decision to blacklist the company in May.

After Huawei was put on what U.S. officials are calling an “Entity List,” U.S. companies were prohibited from partnering with the company without a special license.

This decision has deprived Huawei of hardware components and software make by U.S. tech giants like Google.

As result, Huawei’s latest flagship smartphone, the Mate 30, launched in September without a licensed version of Google’s Android operating system.

Positioning the move as a matter of national security, U.S. officials said the ban was necessary to prevent Huawei from spying on U.S. companies and their consumers.

Despite these challenges, Huawei said it still managed to rake in approximately $122 billion in sales revenue, this year, which represented a roughly 18% increase, compared to 2018.

Among other factors, Huawei’s fortunes have been boosted by some lucrative 5G commercial contracts.

In his latest statement, Xu said he expected Huawei remain on the U.S. government’s Entity List, at least through 2020.