Huawei seeks $30B in deals in 2009

Huawei expects to close infrastructure deals worth up to $30 billion in 2009, despite common predictions that the fixed-line and mobile infrastructure markets will decline during the year.

The Chinese telecom equipment vendor wants to boost the worth of its contracts, which came in just over $23 billion last year. Xu Wenwei, Huawei's chief marketing officer, said the company expects to grow substantially this year, even as other vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson are predicting a slowdown in the market. "We remain quite confident of continued and robust growth this year," he said.

News first circulated in January that Huawei was bullish on its prospects for 2009. The $30 billion figure was first reported in the Chinese media, including China Daily, which cited an internal email sent to Huawei's employees by the company's chairwoman, Sun Yafang. Xu's comments confirm Huawei's projections.   

Part of Huawei's predictions may be based on its role in providing infrastructure to major Chinese mobile operators as they build out various 3G networks. However, Huawei lost out to Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson as vendors for Verizon Wireless' Long Term Evolution (LTE) network plans and has made few inroads in the United States thus far.    

For more:
- see this Financial Times article [1]

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