All publicity is good publicity: Despite Trump's ban, Huawei's smartphone sales actually grew 23% YoY in H1 2019

Last week, it was revealed that analysts expected Huawei to ship 260 million smartphone units this year. We were leery, as we expected Trump's ban to have negatively influenced the company sales by a large margin, all but making the touted figures impractical. It would appear that we were wrong, as sales numbers from the first half of the year show that the company has seen a 23% year-on-year growth in shipment numbers.

Apparently, Huawei shipped 118 million smartphone units in the first half of the year, representing a 23.2% upswing. That's surprising, considering the bad publicity the ban brought to the company. All publicity is good publicity, we guess. It does make sense in a way, though, as it appears that Huawei consolidated its market share in China which offsetted the drop in Western markets.

The company saw a 31% rise in sales at home, ending the first half of the year with 38% of the Chinese smartphone market firmly in its grasp. Considering the upcoming launch of the Mate 30 phones, we'd be surprised if Huawei saw a significant drop in sales. The Chinese giants have overtaken Apple and that doesn't look to be set to change anytime soon.