Huawei has big plans for the future, at least according to the company’s CEO, Richard Yu. During the company’s briefing on Friday, Huawei’s CEO, Richard Yu, said that the company will become the second-largest smartphone manufacturer in 2019, without a doubt, while “it’s possible we become No.1”, he added. As many of you probably already know, Huawei had shipped over 100 million smartphones this year, the company managed to cross that threshold last month, and is actually expecting to reach 200 million shipped handset by the end of this year.
According to a recent report by IDC, Huawei managed to overtake Apple in the second quarter of 2018, and considering how many devices Huawei still keeps selling, it may even retain that position for a while longer, at least until the new iPhone sales kick in. Despite the arrival of the new iPhones, Huawei’s CEO seems confident that the company will be able to retain that number two spot in 2018, and maybe even trump Samsung on the way, which is easier said than done, but it’s hard to deny Huawei’s success in recent years. Huawei’s shipments grew 10-percent in 2017, compared to a year before that, and in 2016, shipments grew by 29 percent. Now, if Huawei manages to ship 200 million smartphones by the end of 2018, its shipments will grow by at least 31-percent compared to last year, which would represent an impressive growth for Huawei.
In addition to talking about its smartphone sales, and expectations for the future in that regard, Mr. Yu also said that the company’s wearables posted a growth of 147-percent in the first half of this year, compared to the same period last year. He also mentioned that Huawei plans to open 10,000 new retail stores around the world by the end of this year, and that Huawei currently counts 53,000 stores on a global basis.