Huawei‘s CEO Yu Chengdong granted an interview to the Chinese media on the sidelines of the P40 series launch event held yesterday. The consumer business head spoke on a number of issues ranging from the reason why the P40 series didn’t feature a 120Hz screen refresh rate, to the company’s phone profit margin and the consumer business projection for this year. 
Richar Yu also unveiled the firm’s shipment results and market share for 2019. The CEO hinted that Huawei’s consumer business raked in total revenue of 467.304 billion yuan ($65 billion). This represents a year-on-year increase of 34.0%. Shipment of both Huawei and Honor phones exceeded 240 million units, an increase of more than 16% year-on-year. He also disclosed that the company shipped over 6.9 million units of 5G phones last year.
Yu Chengdong added that with Huawei’s impressive record, the company could easily have dethroned Samsung to become the world’s number one mobile phone manufacturer in terms of shipping volume if not for the US/China trade war. Even with the sanctions, Huawei’s record shipping makes it the number 2 phone manufacturer globally after Samsung.
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The Huawei exec also spoke about the DXOMark-topping camera technology onboard its latest smartphones. Yu Chengdong mentioned that Huawei cameras are far ahead of its industry rivals including Apple. He hinted that the Huawei P40 Pro camera parts cost $100 which is quite expensive considering there are other parts sourced from suppliers inside the phone. Thus, revealed that the profit margin for the P40 Pro is very low. He lamented how Apple is selling low-cost things very expensive, while Huawei is selling its products with expensive, cutting-edge technology at cheap prices.
Yu Chengdong equally hinted that Huawei has always invested heavily in R&D. In 2019, Huawei’s R&D expenses reached 131.7 billion yuan (about $18.5 billion US dollars). The huge investment is yielding results, though. Huawei currently holds more than 85,000 patents worldwide, 90% of which are invention patents. In 2019, the Chinese tech giant ranked first in terms of patent applications as its patent filings in the EU reached 3524, WIPO data revealed recently.
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