Huawei to buck global telecom trends

Huawei Technologies Co Ltd said on Tuesday that it is confident it will maintain sound momentum for the whole of 2018, after its revenue for the first six months reached 325.7 billion yuan ($47.6 billion), outperforming the slowing global telecom and smartphone market.

Huawei said its revenue grew 15 percent year-on-year, maintaining the same expansion rate as the first six months of 2017. The stable result comes thanks in part to solid performance across its consumer device, enterprise business and cloud divisions.

Its operating profit margin stood at 14 percent, up 3 percentage points from a year ago.

The Shenzhen-based private company did not disclose the figure for net profit.

Xiang Ligang, CEO of telecoms industry website Cctime, said the result was better than expectations, given that the global telecom equipment business is at a low point, with the construction of 4G networks nearing an end and investment in 5G research and development hitting a new high.

"The optimized operating profit margin may be a result of higher smartphone prices. Huawei is working hard to expand its presence in the more profitable high-end smartphone segment," Xiang added.

In the second quarter of this year, Huawei grew its market share in China to a record 27 percent, the biggest share for any smartphone vendor in the nation since the second quarter of 2011, according to the latest report by market research company Canalys.

Huawei also broke the record for the greatest number of shipments into the channel by any vendor, at 28.5 million units, outdoing rivals such as Oppo and Vivo, the report added.

In Europe, Huawei is also growing and gaining market share with particularly strong sales in Spain, Germany, and Italy.

Yu Chengdong, CEO of Huawei's consumer business group, said in June that the world's third-largest smartphone vendor aims to ship nearly 200 million smartphones this year, close to its arch rival Apple Inc's 200 to 210 million annual shipment.