ZTE went through Really rough times last year since of the ban imposed on the company by the U.S. Commerce Department in April 2018. The ban nearly forced the company to shut down but three months later, it reached to deal by paying fines.
However, that ban put a significant toll on the company’s finances. For the year 2018, ZTE — one the delivering telecom equipment company in the world, noted an annual loss of whopping 6.98 billion yuan, what roughly converts to $1.04 billion.
While the loss is within the company’s own estimate of loss ranging from 6.2 billion to 7.2 billion yuan, however it’s worse than the 6.2 billion yuan predicted loss by the analysis of investment firms. The company’s annual gross is announced to be 85.5 billion yuan in 2018, down 21.4% from 2017.
It’s noteworthy that the manufacturer did manage to take the things back to normal during the last quarter of 2018, i.e. from October to December during what the company posted a 276 million yuan net profit, which roughly converts to $41 million, with income amounting to 26.7 billion yuan.
Shenzhen-based ZTE mainly attributed its biggest annual loss to the $1 billion penalties that the company paid to the US government last year as settlement for breaching the terms of an noted deal on trade sanctions violations.
In order to rescind the ban, ZTE agreed to pay $1 billion in fines and put $400 million in escrow like a down payment against future violations. Further more, the company Furthermore agreed to overhaul its board and executive team. For these who are unaware, the ban was imposed on ZTE for selling goods to Iran and North Korea, both of what were under U.S. Economic sanctions at the time.
No matter heading through hard times, the company hasn’t given up on innovating. The company is working on 2 concept smartphones with a high screen-to-body ratio. Although one uses a side sliding display to house all cameras and scanners, the other uses a flap that juts out from the side of the smartphone to carry the selfie snapper. It is moreover working on a foldable cameraphone.
As stated by to the information, released by Counterpoint Research, ZTE was the fourth most well known phone brand in the U.S. with an 11% market share in the first quarter of 2018. Regrettably, from the second quarter through the end of the year, ZTE fell out of the top five.
Read Extra: ZTE Axon S renders leak reveals a horizontal slider, triple rear digital cameras, and Xenon flash among others
Going forward, the manufacturer is planning to ratchet up investments in 5G tech research and development, along with cybersecurity initiatives, to support the deployment of next-generation mobile networks about the world.