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.