Following a lackluster 2016, Huawei’s star is on the rise, with the Chinese tech company enjoying a strong increase in sales over 2017.
2017 was a rollercoaster of a year for Huawei. The Mate 10 Pro was one of our favorite phones of the year, packing an amazing camera and exceptional battery life. The Chinese company also came third in overall smartphone sales for the last part of the year. Despite those victories, it has been continually hampered by an inability to break into the U.S. market, culminating in various U.S. carriers and retailers cutting ties with Huawei in early 2018, following paranoia over links to the Chinese government.
But is Huawei having the last laugh? The company’s profits rose 28.1 percent throughout 2017, taking the total profit to a very respectable 47.5 billion yuan ($7.3 billion). This comes in contrast to a slow period of growth in 2016, in which the company post an increase of just 0.4 percent.
The company also revealed it sold 153 million smartphones worldwide last year, and overall revenue rose to 603.6 billion yuan ($96.1 billion), a 15.7 percent rise on 2016. This growth seems mostly driven by the consumer side of the business, where revenues rose 237.2 billion yuan ($37.8 billion) — an increase of 31.9 percent on 2016.
Huawei looks set to capitalize on these gains by taking a hold of new tech as it emerges, and has increased funding for its research and development wing by 17.4 percent, pumping 89.7 billion yuan ($14.3 billion) into the next generation of mobile internet and other new technologies.
Huawei has recently launched its newest range of smartphones in the Huawei P20 and P20 Pro, and you can read our first thoughts on the P20 Pro. It comes with a world-first of three rear-mounted camera lenses, with incredible camera tech that recently earned it DxOMark’s highest ever camera rating on a smartphone. We’ll have to wait a bit longer to get an in-depth rundown of how well the rest of the phone fares, but based on the strong initial reception, Huawei may have introduced another winner. Unfortunately, you’ll struggle to get hold of it in the U.S., thanks to Best Buy backing off from Huawei’s phones, and U.S. carriers refusing to stock it.
Based are these U.S. companies shooting themselves in the foot? It seems U.S. consumers are the ones missing out the most.
