Huawei lays off hundreds of workers at US research arm

China's Huawei has laid off more than 600 workers from its US-based research arm Futurewei, as the result of being put on a Washington trade blacklist.

Huawei wrote in an emailed statement that the lay-offs, effective as of Monday, were “due to the curtailment of business operations” caused by Washington putting Huawei on the US “entity list”.

That designation prevents US companies from directly exporting technology to the embattled telecoms company without a licence.

The ban means that Futurewei, which is based in California and incorporated in Texas, can no longer transfer US-originated technologies back to Huawei, thus scuppering the original aims of the research arm.