Many, of you will be familiar with the Huawei name, especially those reading from parts of Asia, Latin America and parts of Europe. However, there will be more of you that just thinks of Huawei as the Chinese brand that releases cheap and undesirable smartphones. That’s not the case at all, and in fact Huawei make some pretty great devices, like the Ascend P7 and who can forget the excellent looking Huawei Watch from Mobile World Congress just last month? You might be interested to hear that Huawei is making more money than ever before, with a 33% increase in year-on-year profit from last year, with smartphone sales driving these new figures.
As the Wall Street Journal is reporting, Huawei’s full-year net profit rose to 27.9 billion yuan ($4.5 billion), up from 21 billion yuan the previous year. The company has cited better management of foreign-exchange risks as well as borrowing costs helping them achieve better net profit. However, it seems that Huawei have just managed to sell a lot more this year, with smartphone sales up 33% from the previous year, accounting for 26% of their overall business. Huawei is of course known for supplying equipment to make mobile networks possible and this makes up up 67% of their overall business, while China continued to bring in the big bucks. In China, their revenues rose 32% to 108.9 billion yuan in 2014, thanks to a drive in 4G technology and more competitive devices like the Honor line offering users a great device at a lower cost.
Huawei is no longer “that Chinese company” and has become a global force in the mobile market. While they still face challenges here in the US, they’ve become popular in Latin America, opening up experience stores and such in Columbia, and of course emerging markets throughout Asia continue to be lucrative for the company. Where Huawei look set to make more money in the future is the continued rollout of 4G networks in emerging markets, as well as a focus on the future of wireless, 5G. As an industry leader, Huawei could become one of the first to supply 5G equipment when the time comes, but for now Huawei is making a lot of money from handset sales and equipment sales throughout the globe.