Huawei smartphone sales up 24 percent despite US crackdown - The Verge

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

Huawei made 221.6 billion yuan ($32.2 billion) in revenue in the April-June quarter, a 23 percent increase over the previous quarter despite the escalation of the US-China trade war cutting off its business with American companies. Net profit margin was 8.7 percent on 401.3 billion yuan ($58.3 billion) of revenue for the first six months of 2019.

Huawei sold 118 million smartphones in the first half of the year — 59 million in each quarter — representing a 24 percent year-on-year increase, though the growth was accounted for in the first quarter. Huawei’s consumer business reached 220.8 billion yuan ($32.1 billion) in revenue for the same period, making up 55 percent of the company’s total sales.

“Revenue grew fast up through May,” chairman Liang Hua said in a statement. “Given the foundation we laid in the first half of the year, we continue to see growth even after we were added to the entity list. That’s not to say we don’t have difficulties ahead. We do, and they may affect the pace of our growth in the short term. But we will stay the course.”

Due to Huawei’s convoluted private ownership structure, the company isn’t obligated to issue regular financial figures, and its earnings release is far less detailed than you’d expect from its publicly traded competitors. But Huawei is releasing more information than it historically ever has — the quarterly report in April was actually its first ever.

The figures come as Canalys issues a report today detailing Huawei’s increasing dominance of the Chinese smartphone market over the past quarter. Despite an overall market downturn of six percent, the ninth successive quarterly slide, Huawei managed to grow 31 percent year-on-year to capture 38 percent share at home.

This was at the expense at every one of Huawei’s major competitors — Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Apple — which all experienced double-digit declines, according to the report. China accounted for 64 percent of Huawei’s shipments, the highest proportion since 2013.