Huawei reports strong sales push 2017 profit up 28.1%.
Beijing (AP) – Huawei Technology Ltd, the Chinese maker of
smartphones and telecom equipment, said Friday its profit rose 28.1% in 2017,
boosted by strong enterprise and consumer sales.
Huawei said it earned 47.5 billion Yuan ($7.6 billion) for
the year, marked improvement over the previous year, when profit rose just 0.4%
due to higher spending on research and marketing.
Total revenue rose 15.7% over 2016 to 603.6 billion Yuan
($96.2 billion). The company headquartered in the Southern Chinese city of
Shenzhen is the No. 3 global seller of smartphones behind Samsung Electronics
Ltd. and Apple Inc.
It competes with Sweden’s LM Ericson for the status of
biggest maker of network equipment used by phone and internet companies.
Huawei, founded in 1987, is owned by its employees, with no
publicly traded shares, but reports financial results in an effort to allay security
concerns in the United States, Europe and Australia.
The company had planned to announce its first distribution
agreement with a US carrier in January but that was canceled without
explanation.
News reports said the carrier was AT&T Inc. and the
company backed out due to pressure form US authorities.
Huawei and Honor smartphone brands shipped 153 million
handsets last year for total sales of 237.2 billion Yuan ($37.8 billion), a
39.1% increase, the company said.
Sales of cloud, data center and other enterprise products and
services rose 35.1 to 54.9 billion Yuan ($8.7 billion). Revenue for Huawei’s
carrier business rose a more modest 2.5 to 297.8 billion Yuan ($47.5 billion).
Research and development spending increased 17.5% over 2016
to 89.7 billion Yuan ($14.3 billion). Huawei reports the highest R&D
spending of any Chinese company.
