Chinese vendor Huawei posted unaudited financials for 2014 that showed impressive revenue gains in its consumer division--which houses its smartphone business--as well as its network infrastructure division. As a result of the strong sales, the company said it most likely booked a 17 percent increase in operating profit last year.
Huawei said it will release audited 2014 results in March, but the company's unaudited results offer a glimpse into the continued successes at the privately held Chinese concern.
Specifically, Huawei said its consumer business increased revenues 32 percent last year over 2013, a jump the firm largely attributed to increased sales of midrange and high-end phones in emerging markets. Huawei's consumer business accounted for around 24 percent of its revenues in 2013--up from 22 percent in 2012--but Huawei has not yet said how its revenues split among its various business units in 2014.
"Huawei's consumer business has done a good job." Chief Financial Officer Cathy Meng said, according to Bloomberg. "Our global brand awareness increased remarkably."
Huawei's success in smartphones doesn't come as much of a surprise: According to Strategy Analytics, Huawei increased its smartphone shipments to 16.5 million in the third quarter of 2014, up from 12.7 million in the third quarter of 2013. That gave the company a 5.1 percent share of the global smartphone market--putting it in fifth place, behind market leaders LG, Xiaomi, Apple and Samsung.
As for Huawei's carrier networks division, in which it sells network infrastructure equipment to wireless carriers and other network operators, Huawei said it recorded a 15 percent increase in revenue in 2014 when compared with 2013. Huawei's carrier networks business accounted for 70 percent of the company's overall revenues in 2013.
Overall, Huawei said its revenues grew about 20 percent in 2014, to around $46.3 billion.
Huawei's results in its networks business are particularly impressive considering that the company has been largely locked out of the U.S. wireless business because of government concerns that Huawei's equipment could be used by the Chinese government to spy on Americans. Huawei has loudly disputed such concerns, but the company has nonetheless failed to find any business with Tier 1 wireless carriers.
For more:
- see this Total Telecom article
- see this Reuters article
- see this Bloomberg article
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