Huawei Technologies’ Q3 earnings results are out and they show that the company’s revenue jumped 24% in 2019’s first nine months, defying Trump administration sanctions to sustain growth in its pivotal smartphone business.
Huawei was all but banned by the United States in May from doing business with American companies, significantly disrupting its ability to source key parts. Though the company was granted a reprieve until November, meaning it will lose access to some technology next month. So far the company has mainly sold smartphones that were launched before the ban.
Despite all this, the world’s biggest maker of telecom network equipment and the No. 2 manufacturer of smartphones’ combined revenues for the Q1-Q3 period, reported a revenue of $86.1 billion which is up 24.4 % from the same period last year.
When it comes to global smartphone shipments, this jumped up by 26% in the first three quarters to over 185 million units, helping safeguard Huawei’s position as the world’s second-largest name in mobile devices.
However, Huawei did not explicitly provide data for smartphone shipments in Q3 2019 alone but an estimate suggests the Q3 shipments should come in at around 67 million units. This would represent a 13.5% increase compared to Q2 2019 when the company managed to ship 59 million units. Without a doubt, this is an improvement over flat sales in Q1 and Q2 2019 period. It is also the first time Huawei is seeing growing smartphone shipments since it was put on the US Entity List.
Huawei may be the world’s leading producer of the equipment that powers cellphone networks, but American officials have long been concerned that the company’s products could be used in intelligence-gathering by the Chinese government, an accusation that Huawei has repeatedly denied.
Fortunately or not, Washington’s warnings have so far failed to block Huawei’s drive to remain a powerhouse supplier as telecom carriers around the world upgrade their networks to the next generation of wireless technology, or 5G.
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Apart from Huawei’s Q3 results, Wednesday’s report also details the company’s expanding 5G network with more than 60 commercial contracts with carriers across the world, up from 50 a few months ago. Additionally, more than 700 cities and 220 Fortune 500 companies have partnered with Huawei for its Horizon Digital Platform.
The company, which is now trying to reduce its reliance on foreign technology, said last month that it has started making 5G base stations without U.S. components.
Huawei is also developing its own mobile operating system as the curbs cut its access to Google’s Android operating system, though analysts are sceptical that Huawei’s Harmony OS is yet a viable alternative.
