Huawei doubles down on smartphones as EV sales slow
- ID
- 33117
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 08 Oct 2026, 4:04 PM
- Fetched
- 08 Oct 2026, 4:53 PM
- Provider
- CNBC Technology
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/08/huawei-china-smartphone-ev-slow.html
- Source URL
- https://www.cnbc.com/id/19854910/device/rss/rss.html
Summary
- Score
- 3.5
- Created
- 08 Oct 2026, 4:54 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developerssaas_startup_founders
What happened
Huawei launched its Mate 90 series on Oct. 1, 2026 — China's National Day holiday — its first phone using an in-house "LogicFolding" chip, as its electric-vehicle partnerships see slowing sales. Executive Director Richard Yu said Huawei shipped more than 240 million smartphones in 2019 with a 300 million unit goal, but now sells only several million phones outside China per year, and he wants to recover overseas share. Yu added that Huawei plans to bring HarmonyOS to overseas markets within one to three years, contingent on China's chip manufacturing capacity growing enough to support overseas device sales.
Why it matters
The concrete number to hold onto is 'several million' phones sold outside China annually versus 240 million-plus shipped in 2019 — that gap is why HarmonyOS overseas expansion is framed as a 1-3 year ambition rather than a current channel. If you ship consumer apps in Southeast Asia, this is a watch item, not a roadmap item: there is no ship date, no overseas device volume, and no chip capacity commitment in this report. Nothing in the text mentions Malaysia or any specific Southeast Asian market, so treat any local distribution impact as unconfirmed.
Discussion angle
Is a third mobile OS worth any engineering attention in SEA when the vendor itself says overseas volume is only several million units a year — and what concrete signal (unit numbers, an actual launch market, dev-tool parity) would make you take HarmonyOS seriously?