Huawei Sold 67M Smartphones in Q3 Despite Ban

Huawei’s ban on using the services of Google has indefinitely delayed the global launch of the flagship phone release of Huawei, the Mate 30. But the phone was selling extremely well within China, moving one million units in the first weekend and reaching three million units by the second week. 

Despite ongoing U.S. government scrutiny, these results have helped the Chinese tech giant retain its solid financial figures. Huawei posted total revenue of 610.8 billion yuan ($86.1 billion) and 185 million phones sold in the third-quarter financial results released today, the former 24.4 percent over the same nine-month period of 2018, and the latter approximately equal to last year’s rate. 

But there is a caveat: pay more attention to the statements from Huawei and it becomes clear that the company actually failed to provide Q3-specific figures–in what was billed as a Q3 financial result–and instead only gave up to September 2019 numbers. It indicates that the amount of the third quarter of Huawei is not as satisfactory as the company would have liked, hence the different methods of accounting. 

We can deduce that Huawei sold 67 million devices in Q3, which is a leap from Q2’s 59 million, after doing some calculations using Q1 and H1 results numbers. Such numbers include all handsets from Huawei and Honor, from budget phones such as Honor 9X all the way up to the Mate 30 Pro flagship. But the smashing success of the Mate 30 in China is likely to drive the bulk of production. Huawei refused to break down how much of the 67 million units sold in China, but if we were to venture a guess, we would say most because the lack of Google apps is a big deal breaker for users in Europe, Singapore, and elsewhere outside China. Tech giants linke Huawei may find their other way round to keep that market pace alive.