The US ban on Huawei's technology has had a devastating effect on its Australian business – new data shows its phone sales fell off a cliff in the first half of this year.

Huawei, which overtook Samsung to become the world's No. 1 phone maker in 2020 thanks to its strong performance in China, suffered a 75 per cent decline in Australian handset sales between January and July compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Australian Smartphone & Wearable Devices Market Study 2020-24, conducted by research outfit Telsyte.