Huawei doubles down on smartphones as EV sales slow

BEIJING — Faced with a slowdown in the smartphone and car markets, Huawei’s consumer business is choosing to focus on phones with homegrown chips.

The Chinese tech giant worked overtime to release its first smartphone — the Mate 90 series — using its own “LogicFolding” chip on Oct. 1, the country’s “National Day” and a public holiday,

Ahead of the event, Huawei Executive Director Richard Yu told reporters the company aimed to recover its overseas market share, after U.S. restrictions in 2019 knocked the China-based company from a brief first place. Yu said that at the time, Huawei shipped more than 240 million smartphones in China and elsewhere — with a goal of 300 million units in 2019.

But now Huawei only sells several million smartphones outside China each year, Yu said. He added the company plans to expand its HarmonyOS operating system to overseas markets in the next one to three years, and hopes China’s chip manufacturing capacity will one day enable overseas sales of devices with self-developed chips.

Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business, has long been the on-stage presenter for the company’s smartphone and car events.

The media roundtable ahead of the Mate 90 series launch marked Yu’s first time speaking with foreign press since 2019. That year, U.S. restrictions blocked Huawei’s access to Google‘s Android operating system and TSMC-made semiconductors.

As the impact of the sanctions kicked in, Huawei’s consumer business — once the company’s largest by revenue — halved to about $34 billion in 2021 from the year before. Since then, the consumer business has grown to around $51 billion in 2025, or 39% of total revenue, according to CNBC calculations.

Huawei’s push into the smartphone market comes as sales in China have slumped this year, with a double-digit decline year-on-year in August and September, according to Counterpoint Research.

Meanwhile, Huawei got into the electric car business by working with several Chinese car manufacturers, and has built a business unit with revenues of at least $6.7 billion in 2025, according to the tech giant’s annual report. Unlike other Chinese electric cars’ rapid growth in exports, the Huawei-powered vehicles are so far concentrated in China. Huawei has emphasized it does not manufacture the cars, but provides the software interface and driver-assist system.

But China’s auto market is on track for its worst year since 2021, with sales down by more than 20% over roughly the first three quarters of the year, according to China Passenger Car Association data as of Sept. 27. New energy vehicles, which include battery electric and hybrid-powered cars, have seen sales tumble 13% during that time, the data showed.

In September, Huawei-powered vehicles saw deliveries drop for a third-straight month, down by 29% from a year ago, according to CNBC calculations of publicly available figures from Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance, or HIMA, Huawei’s auto tech software system.

That contrasted with double-digit gains for market leader BYD in each of the past three months, with sales well above 400,000 units a month, company data showed. Leapmotor, meanwhile, maintained rapid growth, with deliveries topping 100,000 cars a month since July.

HIMA, whose five lines of vehicles reflect partnerships with manufacturers such as Chery and Seres, in contrast delivered just under 37,500 vehicles in September. More than 1.56 million units were sold since the first Huawei-powered car was launched in late 2021. Tesla China had yet to report September deliveries as of Wednesday afternoon.

In December 2021, Yu showed off the first car with Huawei’s tech installed, the Aito M5.

But Seres Group, which makes the Aito EV line, has seen its Shanghai-listed shares drop by more than 60% so far this year.

On Oct. 1, Huawei announced it had signed with Seres to cooperate for another five years, including the joint establishment of an Aito business team. Mainland China markets are set to reopen Thursday after being closed since Oct. 1.