Huawei Technologies Co. continued to grow revenue for the sixth consecutive quarter, tallying $33.6 billion for the period ending in June, a 33.7 percent increase year-over-year. The privately held company releases limited financial information. The net profit margin at the half-year mark was said to be 13.2 percent, equivalent to $7.7 billion. Bloomberg extrapolated that to profit of about $5 billion for the quarter, which represents an 18.6 percent decline over the same period last year when asset sales boosted results. The overall trend saw Huawei and other Chinese smartphone manufacturers continuing to gain ground against Apple.

“The Shenzhen-based company’s smartphone shipments rose by 50 percent last quarter as it and other local players like Vivo and Xiaomi Corp. beat out Apple, which dropped to sixth place among handset makers in China, according to market tracker IDC,” writes Bloomberg. “Apple’s sales in China fell 6.5 percent in the June quarter, missing Wall Street projections, even as overall shipments in China grew.”

As of late July, both IDC and Canalys rankings had the top 5 best selling Chinese smartphone brands comprised entirely of local makers, topped by Vivo, with Huawei, Oppo, Honor and Xiaomi rounding out the list, per Fortune.

“In the second quarter, Huawei was the No. 2 smartphone seller in China, the world’s largest smartphone market, with an 18.1 percent market share,” reports The Wall Street Journal, citing IDC research.

PhoneArena says Huawei’s “amazing turnaround started exactly one year ago … when, for the first time since 2020, Huawei introduced a new flagship line,” the Mate 60, powered by its own chipset, the Kirin 9000S, which included support for 5G.

Huawei is still under U.S. sanctions initiated in 2020 which led to initial losses. An eventual rebound led to a federal indictment on charges of sanction evasion and intellectual property theft. A criminal trial is set to begin in New York in January, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Huawei’s next flagship Mate 70 will be closely watched for any processor upgrades when the device is introduced later this year,” Bloomberg writes, adding that “the Mate 60 roiled U.S. policymakers when it debuted a China-made 7-nanometer chip a year ago, despite U.S.-imposed sanctions and export controls geared to stem advances in China’s chip technologies.”

The company has also built a robust automotive unit, earning $1.4 billion from self-driving technology supplied to electric vehicle makers, “more than the combined revenue in the previous two years,” Bloomberg notes, valuing the smart car division at $16 billion.

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Huawei Looks to Upstage Apple with Product Launch Just Hours After Expected iPhone 16 Unveiling, CNBC, 9/2/24