Sanctioned Huawei moving from strength to strength

Huawei’s mobile telecom business is on the rebound with the recovery of its smartphone market share in China and the deployment of a 5.5G pilot network in Beijing.

Both are making meaningful contributions to the company’s overall sales, which increased by more than 9% in 2023, according to a Huawei company statement by rotating chairman Hu Houkun, also known as Ken Hu.

America’s Apple also performed well in China’s coveted cellphone market last year. According to preliminary data from global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation (IDC), Apple led the market for the first time with a 17.3% market share and 20.1% in Q4 but the company’s sales were actually down 2% year-on-year in both periods.

Huawei was not in the top five over the full year, but following the release of the 5G Mate 60 Pro smartphone, its shipments were up 36% year-on-year in Q4 and ranked fourth with a market share of 13.9%. The Mate 60 Pro was announced in late August, deliveries started in September and it was subsequently sold out for weeks.

This was accomplished in a difficult operating environment. Total smartphone shipments in China dropped 5% in 2023 to 271.3 million units.

That represented about 25% of global smartphone sales, which were down 4%. Sales in China were up 1% in Q4 after ten quarters of year-on-year declines while global sales were up 8%.

Huawei aims to double its smartphone shipments in 2024 while ditching Android in favor of its own operating system. On January 18, the company announced the latest version, HarmonyOS NEXT, which will not support Android apps.

The beta version for developers is scheduled for release in Q2. The consumer version is likely to be installed in new Mate series phones expected to go on sale