- Chinese tech giant Huawei reported third-quarter revenue figures on Friday that showed just a 1% year-over-year increase in the third quarter, according to CNBC calculations.
- According to Counterpoint Research, Huawei launched a new smartphone in the three-month period ending in September, helping the company increase its sales in China while Apple suffered a decline in sales.
- Huawei said revenue in the first three quarters of the year rose 2.4% to 456.6 billion yuan, the highest in that period since 2020.
Visitors line up in front of the Huawei flagship store on Nanjing East Road, one of the city’s main commercial and tourist districts, in Shanghai, China, September 30, 2023.
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BEIJING – Chinese tech giant Huawei reported revenue figures Friday that showed just a 1% year-over-year increase in the third quarter, according to CNBC’s calculations.
This is despite the company launching a popular new smartphone at the end of August and sales of its electric car company increasing.
Huawei said revenue in the first three quarters of the year rose 2.4% year-on-year to 456.6 billion yuan ($62.33 billion), the highest in that period since 2020. The US Sanctions against the Chinese telecom manufacturer began in 2019.
Despite these limitations on Huawei’s access to high-end technology, reviews indicate that the company’s new Mate 60 Pro smartphone offers download speeds comparable to 5G thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.
Huawei quietly launched the phone in China in late August and declined to reveal more during a seasonal launch event in late September.
According to Counterpoint Research, more than 1.6 million Mate 60 series devices were sold in the first six weeks of sales.
The research firm estimated that the majority, about 75%, of units sold were Pro models – that’s about 1.2 million units sold.
Shanghai-based CINNO Research estimates Apple, which launched its iPhone 15 in September, is expected to sell 10 million units of the new phone in China this year, for a total of 45.5 million iPhone sales in the country .
The US company reported a 10% year-on-year decline in smartphone sales in the third quarter, while Huawei’s sales rose 37%, Counterpoint Research said on Thursday.
Huawei has also established a presence in China’s fast-growing new energy vehicle market, which includes hybrid and battery-powered cars.
The company sells its operating system and components, such as driver assistance systems, to automobile manufacturers.
In December 2021, Huawei launched its own car brand Aito in collaboration with the manufacturer Seres.
According to a social media post from Richard Yu, who heads Huawei’s auto and consumer business, orders for Aito’s latest M7 topped 60,000 on October 16, just about a month after its release.
On Wednesday, Aito announced that pre-orders for its upcoming M9 SUV had surpassed 15,000.
Huawei is not publicly traded and did not break down revenue by business line in its latest update.
The telecommunications giant said it booked partial gains from the sale of certain businesses, but did not specify which ones.
Huawei said its net profit margin was 16% in the first three quarters of the year. That’s up from a 15% profit margin reported in the first half of the year, when revenue rose 3.1% to 310.9 billion yuan.
Third-quarter revenue was 145.7 billion yuan, up 1% from 144.2 billion yuan in the same period last year, CNBC calculations of Huawei figures showed.
Huawei continued its efforts to expand its patent licensing business in the third quarter with deals with Xiaomi and Ericsson covering 5G connectivity.
The telecommunications giant has rolled out 5G-based business applications in mining, ports and manufacturing, but Friday’s release did not indicate how much revenue, if any, the company generated in the third quarter.
Huawei also made headway in international markets with the expansion of its cloud business to Saudi Arabia in September. The company announced this week that it had opened a research lab in Finland to test health and fitness wearables.
The US claims the Chinese telecommunications giant poses a national security risk due to alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party and the country’s military. Huawei has repeatedly denied the existence of such a risk.
—CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.