Huawei's profit more than doubled amid sales spike

Huawei said its 2009 net profit more than doubled on the back of increased sales, exchange-rate gains and its efforts to push into more developed markets. The closely held Chinese company said its net profit reached $2.68 billion, up from $1.14 billion in 2008.

The equipment vendor had a remarkable 2009; the firm managed to steal share from Western rivals Nokia Siemens Networks and Alcatel-Lucent. According to research firm Dell'Oro, Huawei finished the year just slightly behind Nokia Siemens Networks with around 21 percent global market share. A separate report from Gartner found Huawei commanded the No. 2 spot, behind only Ericsson.

Huawei reported sales for 2009 of $28.1 billion, up 19 percent on its 2008 sales and unchanged from its initial estimates from January. The company said it expects sales to rise 20 percent in 2010. Huawei's contract sales--the value of signed contracts--rose 53 percent in 2009 in North America and 43 percent in Asian markets excluding China, a company spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal.

Late last year, the company proved it could compete on its rivals' home turf. In November, Norway's Telenor awarded Huawei an LTE contract valued at $175.4 million over the next six years. And in December, Huawei was awarded an LTE contract in Sweden from Tele2 and Telenor for their joint 4G network, Net4Mobility. The deal shut out industry leader Ericsson in its home market.

Huawei plans to increase its presence in North America this year by adding 600 jobs. The company has already won a contract with Cox Communications for the company's 3G CDMA network, and is a supplier for Clearwire's WiMAX network--but has so far been shut out of major North American LTE deals.

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this Bloomberg article

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