Mubasher: Huawei expects US restrictions to eat into its annual consumer devices revenue by nearly $10 billion, Reuters reported.

Initially, Huawei’s CEO Ren Zhengfei expected the impact of the restriction would subtract $30 billion from the company’s revenue.

However, the impact of US curbs on Huawei’s business was expected to be less severe than initially thought, as the smartphone maker’s deputy chairman Eric Xu’s estimate came lower than Zhengfei’s projection.

“It seems it is going to be a little less than that, [but] you have to wait till our results in March,” Eric was quoted by Reuters, as saying at a press conference to unveil new artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

The company’s consumer devices division, which includes smartphone business, is delivering “much better” performance this year than previously feared, Xu said.

Last year, the division yielded 349 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) ($49.31 billion) in revenue.

The Huawei unit is pushing to develop an operating system (OS) of its own, bracing for the scenario of being blocked from essential Google’s Android applications.

Since mid-May, Huawei has received a hard blow after the US administration included the Chinese tech behemoth in the so-called Entity List, threatening to cut off its supply of US essential parts and technology.

Meanwhile, Huawei had a temporary relief this week, after Washington granted another 90-day reprieve, allowing the Chinese firm to conduct business with US companies in order to avoid the likely impact on existing customers, but more than 40 affiliates were added to the US economic blacklist.

The reprieve was “meaningless” to Huawei, Xu said, adding that the company’s employees are “fully prepared” to live and work with the ban in place.