Huawei’s revenues rose at their slowest pace in three years in 2025 as slipping cloud sales and limp smartphone growth took the edge off its post-sanctions rebound.
The Chinese outfit said revenues climbed 2.2 per cent to Rmb880.9bn ($127bn, about €111.0bn) last year, after a 22.4 per cent surge in 2024. Net profit increased 8.7 per cent to Rmb68bn (about €8.6bn).
That slowdown follows several years of strong sales at the Shenzhen-based outfit as it clawed its way back from US sanctions and regulatory hits piled on since 2019.
Huawei has become a key piece in China’s drive to wean industry off reliance on US companies for cutting-edge tech infrastructure, especially semiconductors.
It has accelerated chip development to help domestic tech firms keep pace with global peers, even as access to the best kit remains restricted.
Huawei’s Ascend chips are the main rivals to Nvidia’s products in China, which makes this a bit more than a routine earnings wobble.
The revenue drag came from cloud computing, where sales fell 3.5 per cent to Rmb32.1bn (about €4 bn), and from weaker growth in the consumer business.
Consumer revenue grew 1.6 per cent in 2025, compared with more than 38 per cent the year before, and the shine has come off the comeback story.
The company took a knock from strong demand for the Fruity Cargo Cult Apple’s iPhone 17 late last year, which did not help Huawei’s own momentum.
Huawei still held the largest share of mainland China’s smartphone market last year, but shipments rose just 1.7 per cent, versus 7.5 per cent for Job’s Mob, according to Counterpoint Research.
Huawei rotating chair Meng Wanzhou said: “In 2025, Huawei’s connectivity business weathered the impact of industry investment cycles,” and tried to make it sound like a normal bump.
She said the consumer business had overcome “formidable challenges” as it pushed its native HarmonyOS operating system, pitched as a rival to Google’s Android, while computing grabbed AI openings.
A separate report flagged satellite images that appear to show Huawei running an advanced chip production line in China.
Huawei’s fastest growth came from its automotive unit, which designs software, chips and infotainment systems for a growing list of electric vehicle marques. Revenue grew 72 per cent to Rmb45bn (about €5.7bn).
The group cranked up research spending by pouring more money into AI and semiconductor tech.
R&D hit a record Rmb192.3bn (about €24.2bn) in 2025, more than a fifth of revenue and up seven per cent on the year before.
