Huawei Technologies Co. further limited the cost of the U.S. ban and expects smartphone shipments to grow 20% next year despite the loss of access to the latest Android software.

The world’s second largest smartphone seems to be able to find a workaround to Trump's restrictions. The company can rely on its massive home market and in-house software to keep the division humming, said Will Zhang, president of corporate strategy. Sourcing the hardware for smartphone manufacturing wasn’t a problem because of the availability of global supply, he said.

Washington has barred Huawei from buying key U.S. components and software without special licenses. Those mainly include Google’s Android operating system, semiconductor design tools from Synopsys Inc. and Cadence Design Systems Inc. and radio frequency chips made by Qorvo and Skyworks. The situation is threatening for Huawei’s smartphone business -- the company ships more than twice as many devices as Apple -- as well as for its 5G networking gear.

“There are many ways for our U.S. partners to find global solutions, rather than ship from a single U.S.-based source,” Zhang said at Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters.

Zhang said in the past Huawei set one target for smartphone shipments, but now because of increased uncertainty in the market it developed three different goals that include best and worst case scenarios. Under a moderate scenario, smartphone shipments could rise around 20% next year, he said. “Even for the pessimistic one, we see small growth,” said Zhang. The best case projection is for 40% growth.

Huawei gained market share against Apple and Samsung in the third quarter by expanding smartphone shipments 29%. In China, the company's shipments jumped 66% in the third quarter but only rose about 18% sequentially abroad, according to Canalys. Huawei posted a 24% surge in revenue in the first nine months of 2019, boosted by a 26% jump in smartphone shipments to 185 million units.

Billionaire founder Ren Zhengfei also revised down the total impact amount of the U.S. ban. “Now I think it’s less than $10 billion,” he said. A significant part of that comes from Huawei’s server business, which he said had been expected to generate revenue of $8 billion this year. “But that will be cut in half,” he said, because Huawei was having difficulty making x86-based servers.

Zhang also said 20% to 40% of Huawei’s products were affected by the ban. “Some impact was small, so we could easily find a solution within half a year or three months. But for servers, it impacted our business, our revenue and our strategy for the future as well.”

Huawei is exploring ways to deal with the Android ban. The company's Mate 30 series of smartphones runs an open-source version of Android and lacks Google-licensed apps from Gmail to YouTube and Google Play Store.

Huawei is also developing its own operating system, HarmonyOS, which is designed primarily for Internet of Things devices but can also power smartphones. In September, the company offered $1.5 billion to lure global developers to create software for its own ecosystem.