PRESS: Huawei may shut down corp sales arm in Russia on Jan 1

MOSCOW, Dec 19 (PRIME) -- Chinese electronics maker Huawei will shut down Russia’s Enterprise Business Group division of corporate sales of data storage systems and telecommunications equipment, which employed about 2,000 people, from January 1, 2023, business daily Kommersant reported on Monday.

The majority of the employees will leave the division, but the office will stay because “the company is ready to return if active military actions in Ukraine end.”

A source told the daily that Huawei keeps in the country its research and development centers, located in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, and Novosibirsk, which work on 5G and technologies of speech processing and generation, among others.

Huawei’s decision is explained by risks of secondary sanctions because the equipment can be used in the state sector.

One of the sources said that the products brought to the country under parallel import can have limitations in software functioning for the region, and the presence of Huawei on the market of solutions of information and communications technologies will be shrinking gradually.

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