Huawei Mate 90 series smartphones exhibited in Hai’an City, Jiangsu Province, China on October 4, 2026.
Photo | Future Publishing | Getty Images
BEIJING — Facing a slowdown in the smartphone and car markets, Huawei’s consumer business is choosing to focus on mobile phones powered by its own chips.
The Chinese tech giant worked overtime to release the Mate 90 series, the first smartphones to use its proprietary LogicFolding chip, on October 1, the country’s National Day holiday.
Ahead of the event, Huawei executive director Richard Yu told reporters that the company aims to regain overseas market share after U.S. restrictions in 2019 knocked the China-based company from its brief top spot. Yu said that at the time, Huawei had shipped more than 240 million smartphones in China and other countries, and was targeting 300 million smartphones in 2019.
But currently, Huawei sells only a few million smartphones a year outside China, Yu said. He added that the company plans to expand its HarmonyOS operating system to overseas markets over the next one to three years, and hopes that China’s chip manufacturing capabilities will one day allow it to sell devices equipped with self-developed chips overseas.
Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business, has long been a stage presenter at the company’s smartphone and automotive events.
Yu Chengdong, Chairman of Huawei’s Terminal BG, introduces the new Stelato G9 vehicle during a press conference in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China on August 20, 2026.
China News Service | China News Service | Getty Images
The media roundtable ahead of the launch of the Mate 90 series was Yu’s first time speaking to foreign press since 2019. That year, U.S. regulations blocked access to Huawei’s information. googleAndroid operating system and TSMC-Made in semiconductor.
As the impact of sanctions took hold, Huawei’s consumer business, once the company’s biggest revenue, halved in 2021 to about $34 billion from the previous year. Since then, the consumer business has grown to about $51 billion in 2025, or 39% of total revenue, according to CNBC calculations.
Huawei’s entry into the smartphone market comes as sales in China have been weak this year, with double-digit declines in August and September compared to a year ago, according to Counterpoint Research.
Huawei’s EV business in China
Meanwhile, Huawei has entered the electric vehicle business in cooperation with several Chinese automakers, building a business unit that will generate at least $6.7 billion in revenue in 2025, according to the tech giant’s annual report. Unlike other Chinese electric vehicle exports, which are booming, Huawei-powered vehicles are currently concentrated in China. Huawei emphasized that it does not manufacture cars, but provides software interfaces and driver assistance systems.
However, China’s auto market has entered its worst year since 2021, with sales down more than 20% in the first three quarters of this year, and sales of new energy vehicles, including battery electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles, fell 13% during this period, data showed.
Deliveries of Huawei-powered vehicles fell 29% year-on-year in September for the third straight month, according to CNBC calculations of public figures from Huawei’s automotive technology software system, Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance (HIMA).
This contrasts with double-digit profits for market leaders BYD According to company data, sales have been well over 400,000 units in each of the past three months. Meanwhile, Leap Motor continues to grow rapidly, with monthly deliveries exceeding 100,000 units since July.
By contrast, HIMA, which has five vehicle lines that reflect partnerships with manufacturers such as Chery and Ceres, delivered just under 37,500 vehicles in September. Since the first Huawei-powered car was launched at the end of 2021, more than 1.56 million vehicles have been sold. Tesla China had not yet reported September deliveries as of Wednesday afternoon.
In December 2021, Yu unveiled the first car equipped with Huawei technology, the Aito M5.
but Ceres GroupThe Shanghai-listed stock of the company that makes Aito EV products has fallen more than 60% so far this year.
On October 1, Huawei announced that it had signed an agreement with Ceres to cooperate for an additional five years, including co-founding the Aito business team. Mainland China markets have been closed since October 1 but are scheduled to reopen on Thursday.
