Chinese telecommunications tycoon Huawei on Friday posted a net profit rise in 2018 of 25.1 percent year-on-year to the tune of 59.3 billion yuan, with sales revenue standing at 721.2 billion, up 19.5 percent, boosted by strong sales of smartphones worldwide.
That marked the fastest pace of business growth in three years, compared to a 28 percent rise in sales revenue in 2017 and 0.4 percent in 2016.
In 2018, Huawei secured 294 billion yuan and 74.4 billion yuan in its carrier business and enterprise business, respectively.
For the first time, the consumer business acted as the most important source of Huawei's sales revenue, which came at 348.9 billion yuan with a year-on-year increase of 45.1 percent and accounted for 48.4 percent of total revenue.
Whopping R&D input
The Shenzhen-based company invested a total of 101.5 billion yuan in R&D in the past year and took the fifth spot in the 2018 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, in accordance with the company's 2018 Annual Report. Driven by continued funding, its R&D investment has amounted to 480 billion yuan in the last decade.
Huawei filed 5,405 patent applications to the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2018, ranking first worldwide, according to WIPO data.
As of end-2018, it had obtained 87,805 issued patents, of which 11,152 core patents were granted in the U.S.
Strong growth potential
In the first two months of 2019, Huawei's revenue went up more than 30 percent with double-digit growth in three businesses.
"We expect double-digit growth in sales revenue this year in light of the recovery of 5G-driven investment, global industry digitalization and the needs of consumer business," said Guo Ping, Huawei's rotating chairman at the release of the annual report.
That same day, Huawei's Chief Legal Officer Song Liuping noted that they comply with relevant laws in all the countries, and there is no reason for the United States to impose administrative sanctions. "Huawei adheres to an open attitude, maintains communication with relevant legislators and administrations to cooperate with their investigations," Song said.
