Despite a US-led global campaign to smother its rise, Chinese telecom equipments maker Huawei still saw strong growth last year, crossing USD100 billion sales for the first time in 2018.
The Shenzhen-based company raked in RMB721.2 billion in sales, or USD 107 billion, a 19.5% jump from a year earlier. Its net profit also rose by 25%, up from RMB47.5 billion in 2017 to last year’s RMB59.3 billion, according the company’s 2018 annual report.
Consumer business, which includes smartphones, has become the company’s major revenue driver. The division, accounting for nearly half of Huawei’s sales revenue in 2018 on a 45.1% year-over-year growth, now makes up the biggest chunk of the company’s revenue.
The company shipped over 206 million smartphone units and saw a 33.6% growth in 2018, in spite of a 4.1% global shipments fall.
Earlier this month, Huawei’s outspoken consumer business group CEO Richard Yu said his company aimed to beat Samsung and Apple in smartphone shipments.
However, Huawei’s carrier business, which provides telecommunications products to telecom networks around the world, was slightly dented by the continuing political headwind and dropped by 1.3%. The United States has been pushing its allies to restrict or ban Huawei from their telecom networks.
But the company is still optimistic about its prospects. “With the 5G investments made by the carriers this year, and industry digitalization opportunities and growing consumer demand, Huawei will still enjoy double-digit growth in this year,” Guo Ping, the rotating chairman of Huawei, said at a press briefing held on Friday. He also called upon the U.S. government to drop a “loser’s attitude”, claiming that it “wants to smear Huawei because it cannot compete against Huawei”.