Strong Smartphone Demand Boosts Huawei Revenues

Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei said on Monday that revenue surged 30 percent year-on-year in the first half, helped by “solid” sales of smartphones and growth in other business areas.

“Huawei’s mid-range and high-end smartphones, Mate7 and P8 (pictured above) in particular, as well as Honor-branded phones, have made solid progress, helping us guarantee quality and sustainable growth in the consumer business”, said Meng.

The company had a 5.4 percent share of the global smartphone market in the first quarter of this year, a distant fourth behind Samsung, Apple and Lenovo, according to research firm Gartner.

Last year, Huawei’s group revenue rose 20.6 per cent from 2013 to 288.2 billion yuan, according to a previous statement. In 2014, Huawei’s operating margin was 11.9%.

That consolidation would make Huawei the world’s third-largest supplier of telecommunications equipment, behind perennial industry leader Ericsson and the merged Nokia-Alcatel-Lucent operation. The private company did not elaborate in its brief statement.

The Shenzhen-based company also said it generated an operating margin of 18 per cent in the first six months of 2015.

Unfazed by the slowdown in China and prevailing uncertainty in the global economy, Meng said: “We are confident that we will maintain effective growth, and steady and healthy development in all business segments in 2015”.

But Huawei, which has been banned from bidding for sensitive infrastructure contracts in the United States and Australia, insisted its systems were secure.