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Huawei Nears Revenue Peak Again, Signals Post-Sanctions Comeback

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Huawei is set to announce its full-year financial results, revealing a near-return to its 2020 revenue peak despite years of U.S. sanctions. The Chinese tech giant is expected to report revenues of 860 billion yuan ($118 billion) for 2024—just shy of the record 891 billion yuan it achieved before U.S. restrictions slashed its consumer business and chip supplies.

Once in “survival mode,” Huawei now appears to be thriving again. The company has diversified into new sectors like smart driving technology, cloud software, and domestic chip development. These efforts have helped mitigate the impact of sanctions that once seemed poised to cripple its international business.

Smartphones and Software Recovery
Consultancy Isaiah Research estimates Huawei shipped over 45 million smartphones in 2024—up more than 25% year-on-year—despite continued constraints in chip yield rates. Its homegrown operating system, HarmonyOS, now powers over a billion devices. Meanwhile, Huawei’s own enterprise software system, “MetaERP,” has replaced U.S.-origin platforms like Oracle.

Auto Ambitions Paying Off
One of Huawei’s most successful pivots has been into smart vehicles. Its Aito brand—developed with Dongfeng-backed Seres—tripled its sales last year, driven by models like the M7 and M9 that feature Huawei’s driver assistance technologies. The company is also collaborating with other Chinese automakers like Chery, BAIC, JAC Group, and SAIC Group.

Innovation Under Pressure
Experts say sanctions pushed Huawei and its domestic partners toward greater innovation. “Huawei has shown incredible resilience in the face of this national state-led effort,” said Paul Triolo of the DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. He noted that Huawei’s resurgence has led to broader industry collaboration and technological independence within China’s IT sector.

Looking Ahead: Global Patchwork Strategy
While HarmonyOS and its AI chips are gaining traction, Huawei still faces challenges regaining market share in the West due to limited access to Android. However, its infrastructure and data services are growing in markets like the Middle East. Huawei’s global strategy will likely be a “patchwork affair,” said Triolo, but it could dominate in alternative AI ecosystems across key emerging markets.

Beyond Survival
With ambitions to integrate AI into industrial communication systems and expand its connected software offerings, Huawei’s focus is now on long-term growth. It also hinted at renewed international smartphone pushes, such as its high-profile Mate XT foldable phone launch in Malaysia earlier this year.

Huawei Launches Mate 70 with Own HarmonyOS, Moving Away from Android

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Huawei has introduced its latest flagship, the Mate 70 smartphone, marking a significant milestone in its post-Android journey. The device, priced at 5,499 yuan ($760), is powered by Huawei’s own HarmonyOS Next, a departure from Android-based applications. This move underscores Huawei’s ongoing efforts to protect itself from further U.S. sanctions, which have restricted access to foreign technology.

At the launch event, Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei’s consumer business, described the Mate 70 as the company’s most powerful phone in the Mate series, highlighting that HarmonyOS Next is a “pure-blooded” technology developed entirely by Huawei’s engineers. From 2024 onward, all of Huawei’s new smartphones and tablets will run on HarmonyOS, signaling the company’s intent to break away from the Android ecosystem entirely.

The Mate 70 succeeds last year’s Mate 60 series, which surprised the tech industry with its advanced chip technology despite stringent U.S. export controls. This success, along with the introduction of the Mate 60 Pro in August 2023, has reignited interest in Huawei’s high-end smartphones and brought the company back into the premium segment.

Lucas Zhong, a research analyst at Canalys, described the release as a “critical step” for Huawei’s software strategy, emphasizing that moving away from Android would be crucial for the company to strengthen consumer loyalty and attract users looking for alternatives to Google’s and Apple’s operating systems.

Huawei has seen significant growth in the Chinese market, especially in the premium segment. According to Canalys, the company’s share of phones priced over $600 surged from 11% in Q3 2022 to 33% in the same period this year. In contrast, Apple’s share of this market dropped from 72% to 52%.

Huawei, once the world’s second-largest smartphone maker, has struggled since being placed on a U.S. trade blacklist in 2019, which restricted its access to key technologies, including Google’s Android operating system. As a result, Huawei was forced to sell its budget mobile brand, Honor, in a bid to survive.

The original HarmonyOS was introduced in August 2019, supporting Android-based apps, after Huawei’s U.S. blacklisting. Over time, the company has invested heavily in developing a fully homegrown operating system and has gained support from major Chinese tech firms to build a compatible app ecosystem.

Huawei aims to develop a robust application ecosystem for HarmonyOS, with plans to have 100,000 apps available within a year. Eric Xu, Huawei’s former rotating chairman, has stated that building this ecosystem in China first is key to eventually expanding it globally.

Analysts predict that the Mate 70 series could see over 10 million shipments over its lifetime. However, building a competitive ecosystem for HarmonyOS will take time, as the company works to expand its developer community.