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InvestNot yet confirmed elsewhere1 publisher2 min readPublished

Huawei's overseas phone comeback waits on China's chip factories

Huawei is putting its consumer business behind phones on its own chips as deliveries of Huawei-powered cars slide, down 29% in September. Outside China it now sells only several million phones a year, the base from which Richard Yu wants to win back overseas share.

The Investor · Invest desk

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Photograph accompanying Huawei's overseas phone comeback waits on China's chip factories
Photo: yahoo.com

What happened

  • Huawei launched the Mate 90 series on Oct. 1, China's National Day holiday, as its first smartphone running its own LogicFolding chip.
  • China's smartphone sales fell by double digits year on year in both August and September, according to Counterpoint Research.
  • Huawei was shipping more than 240 million phones when the 2019 U.S. restrictions hit and had targeted 300 million that year, Yu said.
  • The pre-launch roundtable was Yu's first with foreign press since 2019, the year U.S. rules cut Huawei off from Google's Android and TSMC-made chips.
  • HarmonyOS, Huawei's operating system, is set to expand into overseas markets over the next one to three years, according to Yu.

Compiled by The InvestorSomething wrong?How this is made

Why it matters

  • constraint Selling own-chip phones abroad depends on how much China's fabs can produce, a supply the consumer unit cannot increase with launches or marketing spend.
  • decision With overseas volumes too small to carry growth for now, the Mate 90 has to take share from rivals inside a home market that is shrinking.
  • exposure Partners own the car factories, so the delivery slump hits their capital before Huawei's, and the five-year Seres deal ties Huawei to a partner whose investors have already sold hard.

The consumer business halved to about $34 billion in 2021 [8], so it took in roughly $68 billion the year before [22]. CNBC's estimate of around $51 billion for 2025 [9] puts it at about three-quarters of the pre-sanctions level [23]. Four years of growth have won back half of the $34 billion that 2021 erased [24]. At 39% of the total [9], it implies company-wide revenue of roughly $131 billion [21].

The car unit is a smaller line. Huawei's annual report puts its 2025 revenue at no less than $6.7 billion [11], about one-eighth of the consumer business [25]. HIMA, the alliance that sells Huawei-powered models, delivered just under 37,500 vehicles in September [15]. A 29% annual drop [14] puts September 2025 near 53,000 [26]. BYD sold more than 400,000 a month through the same three months [16], better than ten times HIMA's September [27].

The national market explains part of that. China Passenger Car Association data to Sept. 27 show overall car sales down more than 20% and new energy vehicles down 13% [13]. It does not explain Leapmotor, which has delivered more than 100,000 cars a month since July [17].

Huawei keeps its own capital out of car plants. It supplies the software interface and driver-assist system, it does not build the vehicles, and the cars it powers have so far stayed concentrated in China while other Chinese EVs export rapidly [12]. Seres, which makes the Aito line, has seen its Shanghai shares fall more than 60% this year [18]. On Oct. 1, the day the Mate 90 launched, Huawei signed with Seres for five more years, including a joint Aito business team [19].

If Chinese fabs scale far enough, Huawei sells its own-chip devices abroad, an outcome Yu said he hopes for one day [6]. If they do not, HarmonyOS can still reach foreign buyers on Yu's one-to-three-year schedule [5] while the hardware waits. The third possibility is that the push stays a fight for share at home, in a phone market Counterpoint has shown contracting [10].

I think the third is the one to price for now. Read several million overseas phones as generously as ten million and the figure is still about 4% of the more than 240 million Huawei shipped before the 2019 restrictions [28]. The view is wrong if Huawei reports overseas volumes in the tens of millions inside the HarmonyOS window. That would mean Chinese chip capacity arrived before Yu was prepared to put a date on it.

What to watch

  • HIMA's October deliveries, which will show whether the year-on-year decline in Huawei-powered cars runs to a fourth straight month.
  • Seres shares when mainland markets reopen Thursday after the Oct. 1 holiday, the first trading on the five-year Aito renewal.
  • Counterpoint's October China smartphone figures, the first read on whether the Mate 90 gains Huawei share in a market falling by double digits.

Clarity's read

What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption25
Hype gap+30
Incentives60
Confidence55
Why these scores

Claim ledger

Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.

  1. [1]

    Huawei released its Mate 90 series on Oct. 1, China's National Day public holiday, as its first smartphone using its own "LogicFolding" chip.

    ReportedSupportedView cited source
  2. [2]

    Huawei Executive Director Richard Yu, chairman of the consumer business, told reporters the company aims to recover its overseas market share after U.S. restrictions in 2019 knocked it from a brief first place.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Richard Yu, via CNBCView cited source
  3. [3]

    Yu said that at the time of the 2019 restrictions Huawei shipped more than 240 million smartphones in China and elsewhere, with a goal of 300 million units in 2019.

    ReportedSupportedSource: Richard Yu, via CNBCView cited source

Sources

1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.

  1. cnbc.com

    1 article · October 8, 2026

    Huawei doubles down on smartphones as EV sales slow

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