Huawei's revenue for its 1HFY2023 increased by 3.1% over the year-earlier period to RMB310.9 billion. The higher turnover recorded for the six months ended June marks a reversal of lower revenue over the last couple of years.
Notably, 1HFY2023 net margin reported by the privately-held company reached 15%, a big improvement over 5% recorded for 1HFY2022.
Sabrina Meng, the company's rotating chairwoman, thanks customers and partners for their support and her colleagues for their solidarity and dedication.
"Huawei has been investing heavily in foundational technologies to harness trends in digitalization, intelligence, and decarbonization, focusing on creating value for our customers and partners," she adds.
Of particular note was the resumption of revenue growth for Huawei’s consumer business in 1HFY2023.
As a result of US policies, Huawei's smartphones are not to be installed with the Android operating system. This has caused the consumer business group to suffer a 11.9% drop in sales for the whole of FY2022 to RMB214.5 billion.
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For 1HFY2023, Huawei's consumer business group, which sells other devices ranging from personal computers to wearable devices, reported revenue of RMB103.5 billion, a slight gain of 2.2% y-o-y.
In contrast, revenue in 1HFY2022 and 1HFY2021 was down 25.4% y-o-y and 47% y-o-y respectively.
Huawei explains that the growth in the consumer business was largely driven by the launch of several new devices, such as the P60 smartphone, the Mate X3 foldable and the Watch Ultimate in March.
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These new products helped lift Huawei's domestic smartphone sales in 2Q by 76%, amid an overall market has been contracting. Upon the end of the quarter, Huawei has regained a spot within the top five smartphone brands in China.
Going forward, Huawei says it will resume the “normal” pace of new launches of the flagship models of its smartphones.
Next, in the first half of 2023, Huawei's ICT infrastructure business remained reported revenue of RMB167.2 billion, which Meng describes as "solid".
With 5G in commercial deployment for four years, Huawei, a leading mobile network vendor, is eyeing to deploy the 5.5G as the "next step forward", featuring 10-gigabit downlink speeds, gigabit uplink speeds, the ability to support 100 billion connections, and native AI.
This coming 2024, the company plans to launch a complete set of commercial 5.5G network equipment to be prepared for the commercial deployment of 5.5G.
The company’s digital power business, which generated RMB24.2 billion, has helped its users generate 845.5 billion kWh of green power and save 35.5 billion kWh of electricity as of June.
Huawei estimates that these efforts have reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 400 million tonnes, roughly the same as planting 540 million trees.
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Moving forward, Huawei Digital Power will continue to position itself as a "technology product company" and help facilitate the green and low-carbon transition and sustainable development across industries.
The company's cloud business, which reported a revenue of RMB24.1 billion for 1HFY2023, has been extended to cover 83 so-called availability zones (AZs) across 29 geographical regions, serving customers from more than 170 countries.
“Huawei Cloud has gradually emerged as the preferred partner for many customers looking to migrate to the cloud in industries like finance and manufacturing,” the company says.
In addition, Huawei is trying to win a share of the growing car market via its intelligent automotive solution (IAS) business, which generated RMB1 billion in 1HFY2023.
Rather than competing directly with other existing car makers, Huawei provides the systems for intelligent connected vehicles instead.
The company has already invested US$3 billion in this business and is committing further to capture the longer-term "strategic opportunities".
"Our digital power and cloud businesses both experienced strong growth, and our new components for intelligent connected vehicles continue to gain competitiveness," says Meng.
