Huawei posts 9.63% rebound in sales for 2023, driven by popularity of Mate 60 series 5G smartphones that defied US sanctions

Sales from Huawei’s consumer business, which includes its popular flagship 5G smartphones and its co-developed Aito electric cars, recorded a 17.3 per cent increase to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, being one of the strongest segments.

US said to weigh sanctions against Huawei’s secretive chip supply network

It was the first growth posted for the consumer business since 2021, after the US government tightened its restrictions against Huawei’s access to advanced semiconductors developed or produced using US technology, effectively crippling its smartphone business.

Last August, Huawei staged a surprise comeback with the Mate 60 Pro smartphone, powered by a home-grown advanced processor, the Kirin 9000s. This was Huawei’s first 5G smartphone since tightened US trade sanctions in 2020, and its release fuelled a wave of patriotic fervour among Chinese consumers that boosted domestic sales.

While Huawei is private, it has voluntarily disclosed key financial data since 2000. However, company executives skipped this year’s annual results press conference.

It has been a company tradition for top executives to take journalists’ questions after announcing results, starting as far back as 2013, and including a virtual event in 2020 during the pandemic.

“The company’s performance in 2023 was in line with forecast,” Ken Hu Houkun, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said in a statement. “We’ve been through a lot over the past few years. But through one challenge after another, we’ve managed to grow.”

This year, Huawei will keep investing in technology and open innovation to help different industries modernise, the company said in the statement.

Huawei’s shift to keep a low profile came as its mysterious Kirin 9000s processor invited closer scrutiny from Washington, which is reportedly targeting Huawei’s chip supply chain including Chinese top chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. The US Bureau of Industry and Security said in September that it is probing the “purported” 7-nm chip.

Nonetheless, Huawei is not backing away from making further moves in the smartphone industry. The company said it will resume its pace of launching flagship smartphones, which include the Mate series and P series.

Huawei’s recovery also came amid its efforts to diversify its revenue sources by venturing into new areas such as smart car systems. Its intelligent automotive solutions business, in which the company works with carmakers and supplies its own components and software, grew 128 per cent to 4.7 billion yuan in 2023, compared to 2.1 billion yuan in sales in 2022, according to the company.

Huawei has been making a deeper push into the automotives sector and last year announced a new joint venture with Changan Automobile, a major state-owned carmaker, while also extending its invitation to other domestic carmakers to take an equity stake. Huawei said it plans to transfer its smart-car system business to the new unit with investments from Changan.

Its ICT Infrastructure, which includes the buildout of 5G networks and data centres for carriers and enterprises, reached 362 billion yuan with a 2.3 per cent growth, as the company expects to ride on the digital transformation of various industries and the upgrade to 5G-Advanced networks in the future.

Huawei expects 2024 to mark the start of the commercial use of 5G-Advanced, which promises to increase to 10 gigabits per second on 5.5G networks from the current 1Gbps to enable the adoption of connected cars and generative artificial intelligence.

The cloud computing business was the fastest growing industry segment for Huawei in 2023, which grew 22 per cent to 55.3 billion yuan. Its digital power business, where Huawei helps customers transform to greener energy, grew 3.5 per cent to 52.6 billion yuan.

Huawei said its research and development expenses in 2023 reached a record high at 164.7 billion yuan in 2023, compared to 161.5 billion yuan in the previous year.

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