“ZTE’s workforce has shrunk close to 150 employees while Huawei has nearly 200 employees currently,” an industry executive familiar with the two firms said. At the end of 2020, ZTE and Huawei had close to 1,000 and 1,500 employees, respectively.
Amid India-China border tensions, New Delhi cited cybersecurity concerns while issuing a directive last year that required all telecom equipment supplies to go through a tighter screening process – to be procured from entities marked as ‘trusted sources’ and deploy gear only marked as a ‘trusted product’.
‘Ops within Ambit of Rules’
Both ZTE and Huawei are yet to receive the trusted sources tag, while its European, US and Indian rivals have already secured them and are receiving trusted products’ approvals to supply network equipment on a case-to-case basis.
Both Huawei and ZTE have also been on the radar of the income-tax department amid allegations of tax evasion. Both companies have denied any wrongdoing.
In a statement to ET, Huawei said that the company’s “operations have been impacted” during the last couple of years.
“In the past two years, our operations have been impacted by factors and we have been optimising our resources as per business requirements. While we have been facing a lot of challenges and turbulence of regulations, we carry out our operations only within the ambit of all the laid out government policies, guidelines and regulations,” Huawei said.
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