Huawei keeps on going

“GENUINELY FRIGHTENED” by Huawei. That was the verdict of Wilbur Ross, America’s commerce secretary, delivered recently to an audience of diplomats. The Chinese tech giant is the world’s biggest supplier of mobile-network equipment. American officials worry that it could use that position for electronic spying or sabotage on behalf of Beijing.

With that in mind, in May Mr Ross’s department placed Huawei on the “entity list”, restricting the ability of American firms to do business with it. Many analysts expected the results to be painful. Huawei spends more than $10bn a year on buying software, processors and the like from American firms. So far, though, the pain has failed to materialise. Sales of Huawei’s smartphones, which can no longer ship with Google’s popular apps, have flatlined outside China. But on the whole, the firm seems in robust health. On October 16th it announced revenues of 611bn yuan ($89bn) for the first nine months of 2019, up by 24% year-on-year. It said it had signed over 60 contracts to install zippy 5G phone networks around the world.