Huawei Rides Smartphones, Big Data, Cloud, IoT to 2014 Sales of $46B
Chinese telecom equipment supplier turned mobile device maker Huawei is crediting an expanded portfolio that includes not only smartphones but also big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) as driving the company’s 15 percent spike in sales to $46 billion in 2014.
“Technological innovations in cloud computing, Big Data, and the Internet of Things (IoT) accelerated, with smart devices connecting the lives of more and more people,” current Huawei chief executive Ken Hu wrote in a New Year’s message on the company’s website.
“We have seized these opportunities, continued to focus on our pipe strategy, streamlined management, and maintained effective growth,” he said. “As a result, our sales revenue is expected to reach US$46 billion in 2014, an increase of over 15% year-on-year.”
Hu provided no other financial details on the company’s performance.
Hu’s public disclosure follows a Reuters report based on an internal Huawei document indicating the company’s smartphone sales rose by more than 30 percent to $11.8 billion in 2014 along with a 40 percent spike in smartphone shipments to 75 million. Huawei last year said that it hoped to ship about 80 million smartphones in 2014. It also has targeted sales of $70 billion by 2018, or 10 percent annual growth.
Hu rotates every six months with two other top Huawei executives to share the chief executive slot. He specifically credited Huawei’s big data and cloud collaboration deals with Accenture and SAP for its overall revenue boost. According to Hu, Huawei now maintains some 480 data centers worldwide and 160 cloud-centric data centers, “while our agile networks and S12700 agile switch now serve hundreds of top-tier industry customers.”
As for the IoT, Huawei’s telecom equipment foundation allows it a unique advantage.
“We predict that by 2025, there will be more than 100 billion connections worldwide, creating a market of unprecedented scale,” Hu wrote. “How to store and process, transmit and distribute, acquire and present these massive data are enormous challenges as well as strategic opportunities to Huawei.”
He said the company’s 2015 blueprint includes:
- Delegating “responsibility and authority to operational units in the field”
- Improving “project operations and management capabilities”
- Focusing on “market-oriented innovation and customer engagement”
- Improving its cybersecurity efforts
- Building a “global value chain“
- Continuing to incent performance for its employees
“At the best of times, being the enabler of this Better Connected World is the ideal role for Huawei,” Hu wrote.
Last week, Huawei Honor brand president Jeff Liu said the low-end smartphone line had skyrocketed to sales of 20 million units from one million in the last year, a spike the company has attributed to a strategic shift to an online-only business model similar to Xiaomi.
