Huawei, the world’s largest telecom equipment supplier may have been a part of many controversies last year but it seems that the company’s financials haven’t taken a hit. The company has reported a 19.5 percent jump in annual revenue to 721.2 billion yuan ($107.1 billion) in 2018.
The company also revealed that its consumer business group became the biggest contributor to this record revenue for the first time. This reflects the gains that Chinese smartphone brands have made both at home and abroad amid flat sales at its network equipment business.
Huawei’s revenue of the carrier business reached 294 billion yuan, which is roughly the same as the previous year, but the company’s revenue at its consumer business surged 45 percent to 348.9 billion yuan. On the other hand, revenue at Huawei’s enterprise business rose almost 24 percent to 74.4 billion yuan.
The Group revenue growth last year was faster than the 15.7 percent in 2017. The company’s net profit hit 59.3 billion yuan, up 25.1 percent year-on-year. The company also said that it invested 101.5 billion yuan in research and development in 2018, roughly percent of its revenue.
At a media briefing, Guo Ping, Huawei’s rotating chairman, said: “Flat sales in the carrier business were due to 4G rollout while 5G is just starting. We expect more large-scale deployment of 5G in 2019 … 5G will enable broader connectivity, not just among people but also between people and things and among things. That will create huge opportunities.”
With this latest financial postings, Shenzhen-based Huawei has now joined the ranks of multinational technology companies in the $100 billion club, which includes the likes of Apple and Google’s parent Alphabet.
Read More: Honor 20, Honor 20 Pro, Huawei Y5 2019, Huawei P Smart Z and more get EEC approval
However, the road ahead for Huawei seems complicated as it has been in the center of the US-China trade war. The United States is making efforts to block the international deployment of Huawei’s 5G equipment because of security concerns.
