The Xiaomi booth at the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona, Spain.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
BARCELONA — U.S. President Donald Trump’s continued clashes with China over tech and trade looms heavy over Chinese smartphone vendors who have grown globally in the past few years, creating uncertainty over whether some of these companies may be targeted by Washington, similarly to Huawei.
At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Chinese electronics players from Xiaomi to Honor and Oppo were out in force, showing off their latest devices. Xiaomi even had its latest electric vehicle — the SU7 Ultra – on show as it looked to create a buzz.
To some extent, Huawei serves as a cautionary tale to other Chinese players. The Shenzhen-headquartered firm was once the biggest smartphone vendor in the world until U.S. sanctions crushed its handset business.
Just as Huawei is looking to dip its toe into international smartphone sales again and other Chinese players are growing quickly, Trump is back in the White House, which is likely to overshadow these companies’ presence at MWC, according to Ben Wood, chief analyst at CCS Insight.
“I think also unfortunately for Huawei, just as they are starting to get back on their feet, the re-emergence of Trump and his overall strategy with regards to ‘America First’ and placing pressure on the Chinese, not only affects Huawei, but it affects all of the Chinese manufacturers that will be at MWC,” Wood told CNBC.
“I think it’s very much going to be the elephant in the room at MWC with regards to a huge amount of investment and lavish spending by the Chinese manufacturers, with the shadow of what’s going to happen in coming months hanging over them.”
Xiaomi, Oppo and Honor were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Chinese players have been a feature of MWC for several years as they’ve expanded their footprint globally. Now eight of the top 10 smartphone players are headquartered in China, according to Canalys data. Xiaomi for example is the world’s third-largest.
Xiaomi displayed its new SU7 Ultra electric car at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Xiaomi has grown its presence in Europe while others, like Transsion, have focused on emerging markets. With that success also comes the potential for further scrutiny, Wood said.
“The danger for these manufacturers is if they put their head too far above the parapet, they’ll start to get scrutiny from the U.S. administration,” Wood said.
“So I think they have to tread a fine line in Barcelona and make sure that they don’t make too much noise because the last thing they want is to be the poster child for Chinese technology and become the latest focal point for Trump and his advisors.”
So far, Trump has focused on raising tariffs on Chinese imports. But there has been little action on the technology restriction front. Under the previous President Joe Biden, Washington brought in several rounds of restrictions that looked to cut off China’s access to advanced technology in areas such as semiconductors.
Europe focus
Other analysts agree there is a risk of increased scrutiny but point to a couple of key reasons why other Chinese manufacturers may not be restricted the way Huawei was.
Francisco Jeronimo, vice president for data and analytics at International Data Corporation (IDC), said that the Chinese brands are focusing their efforts on Europe rather than the U.S., which could help deflect scrutiny from Washington.
“They [Chinese players] definitely don’t have a chance selling in the U.S., but if they continue targeting Europe as they are, I don’t think that’s a risk and I don’t think it will come to a point where the U.S. administration will tell whatever countries in Europe they need to stop selling Xiaomi or Honor or any other brand,” Jeronimo told CNBC.
“I don’t think there’s a massive risk because at the end of the day as they are not targeting U.S. consumers.”
Honor announced at $10 billion AI investment called the Honor Alpha Plan at the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
Another reason why the U.S. may not target Chinese firms as heavily as Huawei is because it could harm American tech firms, according to Neil Shah, partner at Counterpoint Research.
“It’s hard to say how much Trump will tighten the screws on Chinese players because they’re dependent on Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm,” Shah told CNBC.
Chinese players selling outside of China run Google’s Android operating system on their smartphones. Meanwhile, many of them rely on chips from U.S. firm Qualcomm. Many Chinese smartphone makers also sell laptops and tablets which may run Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Restricting Chinese companies’ access to this technology could harm U.S. firms, Shah argues.
“Qualcomm will lose out, Microsoft will lose out and eventually Google will lose out as well,” Shah said.
Charles Liang, CEO of Super Micro, speaks at the HumanX AI conference at in Las Vegas on March 10, 2025.
Big Event Media | HumanX Conference | Getty Images
Super Micro issued disappointing guidance on Tuesday, a week after the server maker provided preliminary results for the latest quarter that fell far shy of Wall Street’s expectations. The stock slid about 4% in extended trading.
Here’s what the company reported in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 31 cents adjusted vs. 50 cents expected
Revenue: $4.60 billion vs. $5.42 billion expected
While the latest numbers were below analysts’ estimates, they were in line with early results that Super Micro disclosed last week. The company said at the time that revenue in the fiscal third quarter would be between $4.5 billion and $4.6 billion, and that earnings per share would fall in the range of 29 cents to 31 cents. The stock plummeted 12% following that release.
But Super Micro on Tuesday gave investors their first glimpse into fourth-quarter results, and those are also below expectations. Super Micro called for 40 cents to 50 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $5.6 billion to $6.4 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had been looking for 69 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $6.82 billion in revenue.
The macroeconomic environment is likely to weigh on performance, the company said, following President Donald Trump’s announcement in early April of sweeping new tariffs on imported goods. CEO Charles Liang also said that some customers delayed purchases of data center technology in the latest quarter.
“We do expect many of those commitments to land in the June and September quarters, reinforcing my confidence in our ability to meet our long-term targets,” Liang said in the release. He added that “economic uncertainty and tariff impacts may have a short-term impact.”
Super Micro’s revenue grew 19% year over year during the quarter, which ended on March 31. Net income of 17 cents per share were down from 66 cents in the same quarter a year ago.
It’s been a treacherous past year for Super Micro. Prior to that, the stock had been on a tear due to the company’s position in the artificial intelligence market, selling servers packed with Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Over the summer, short seller Hindenburg Research issued a report on the Super Micro, claiming it had found proof of “accounting manipulation.” In October, Ernst & Young resigned as the company’s auditor after raising concerns about internal control over financial reporting and other matters.
An independent special committee investigated but “did not raise any substantial concerns about the integrity of Super Micro’s senior management or Audit Committee, or their commitment to ensuring that the Company’s financial statements are materially accurate,” according to a statement.
In February, Super Micro filed an annual report for its 2024 fiscal year, which ended on June 30, helping to keep the stock from being delisted on Nasdaq. Staff from the exchange had informed Super Micro that the company was back in compliance with filing requirements, according to a statement.
As of Tuesday’s closing bell, Super Micro had gained 9% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index had declined by 4%.
Executives will discuss the results on a conference call starting at 5 p.m. ET.
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
Shares of AMD rose more than 4% in extended trading.
Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG expectations for the quarter that ended March 29:
Earnings per share: 96 cents adjusted vs. 94 cents expected
Revenue: $7.44 billion vs. $7.13 billion expected
For the current quarter, AMD expects about $7.4 billion in sales with a gross margin of 43%, versus Wall Street estimates for earnings of 86 cents adjusted on $7.25 billion in sales.
The company reported net income of $709 million, or 44 cents per diluted share, versus net income of $123 million, or 7 cents per share, during the year-earlier period. Revenue grew 36% on an annual basis.
AMD is the second-place server central processing unit vendor, behind Intel, but its Epyc line of processors has been taking market share in recent years.
The company is also the closest competitor to Nvidia for “big GPUs,” or graphics processing units. Those are the kind of chips that are deployed in data centers by the thousands for building generative AI. It did $5 billion in AI GPU sales in the company’s fiscal 2024.
Both are reported in the company’s data center segment, which came in at $3.7 billion in sales, topping a StreetAccount estimate. Data center sales were up 57% on an annual basis, which the company attributed to demand for both Epyc processors and Instinct GPUs.
The company’s other major segment, Client and Gaming, includes chips for consumer devices such as laptops, gaming PCs and game consoles. The overall segment rose 28% on an annual basis to $2.9 billion. AMD said sales for its laptop and PC chips, which it calls client revenue, surged 68% year over year because of strong demand for chips called Zen 5 that the company released last summer.
Gaming sales, however, declined 30% on an annual basis, which the company attributed to a decrease in console chip revenue.
AMD’s embedded segment, which is mostly sales from the company’s 2022 acquisition of Xilinx, declined 3% on an annual basis to $823 million.
Visitors play the EA Sports FC 25 game in front of a placard with England’s midfielder Jude Bellingham at the Electronic Arts booth during the media day at the Gamescom video games trade fair in Cologne, western Germany, on Aug. 21, 2024.
Ina Fassbender | AFP | Getty Images
Electronic Arts topped fiscal fourth-quarter bookings estimates Tuesday.
Shares rose about 7%.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
Earnings: 98 cents per share. The figure is not comparable to analyst estimates
Revenue (bookings): $1.80 billion vs. $1.56 billion expected
The video game maker said it expects bookings to range between $7.60 billion and $8 billion for the fiscal 2026 year, ahead of a StreetAccount estimate of $7.62 billion. Net bookings for the 2025 fiscal year totaled $7.355 billion.
First-quarter bookings guidance came up short of analyst expectations. EA expects the figure to range between $1.175 billion and $1.275 billion, versus a $1.275 billion projection from analysts.
CEO Andrew Wilson said that the company’s FC and College Football games contributed to a strong year of bookings.
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“As we look to the future, we’re confident in our ability to execute across a deep pipeline — beginning this summer with the highly anticipated reveal of ‘Battlefield,’ a pivotal step in delivering on our next generation of blockbuster entertainment,” he wrote.
Net income for Q4 2025 grew nearly 40% to $254 million, or 98 cents a share, from 182 million, or 67 cents in the fourth quarter of Q4 2024. For the year, net income totaled 1.12 billion, or $4.25 per share, down from $1.27 billion, or $4.68 per share last year.
The company also announced a 19-cent per share dividend.