Huawei revenues advance

The Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei has posted revenues of US$18.54 billion for the first half of this year, up 10.8 per cent from the same period last year.

The Chinese telecoms equipment maker Huawei has posted revenues of US$18.54 billion for the first half of this year, up 10.8 per cent from the same period a year ago. The private company expects to generate profit growth of 7 to 8 per cent by the end of this year and a compound annual growth rate of 10 per cent for the next five years.

The growth has been a result of expansion of its three business lines across the Middle East, Europe and Australia, according to the company. It has been moving away from its core network equipment business to launching smart devices and providing enterprise solutions such as cloud computing.

"Our success in H1 2013 was mainly driven by steady growth of the carrier network business, the expansion of the enterprise business and the fast growth of the consumer business," said Cathy Meng, the chief financial officer. "From these positive indicators, we believe Huawei will generate strong performance and profit margins in the second half of this year and we are confident we will achieve our goal to increase revenue by 10 per cent in 2013."

"Looking ahead, we anticipate the Middle East to remain one of the key expansion markets for Huawei globally.  This would keep us at pace with – or even above – the brand's outlook of around 10 per cent annual growth in 2013," Shi Yaohong, the prresident of Huawei Middle East, said.

"In the telecom space this will be in part driven by the region’s continued deployment of 4G LTE networks and the refinement of mobile broadband offerings. In the enterprise ICT market, we anticipate growing revenues by as much as 50 per cent year-on-year, encouraged by local demand for more advanced cloud computing technologies, data centers and unified communication tools."

Middle East revenues totalled $2bn last year for the company, up 18 per cent from 2011, with similar performance predicted for this year too. The company has been ramping up its efforts in the consumer market with the appointment of a new vice president of global consumer business and numerous smartphone and tablet launches.

Huawei recently launched the world's biggest smartphone, the Ascend Mate, a 6.1-inch Android device. The Ascend line-up of devices was launched with a $30 million global marketing campaign across 45 markets at the beginning of this year.

Last year the company reported revenues of US$35.35bn, of which $7.7bn came from its consumer handset business. The company shifted 9.9 million devices in the first quarter of the year, accounting for 4.6 per cent of the global mobile phone market share, according to IDC. Huawei ranks fourth behind Samsung, Apple and LG.

"The major trend in the industry is the emergence of Chinese companies among the leading smartphone vendors," said Ramon Llamas, the research manager at IDC. "A year ago, it was common to see previous market leaders Nokia, Blackberry and HTC among the top five.

"While those companies have been in various stages of transformation since, Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE as well as Coolpad and Lenovo, have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android devices."