Huawei net profit growth reaches four-year high

China's leading telecommunications equipment maker Huawei Technologies reported net profit of 21 billion yuan ($3.38 billion) in 2013, up 34.4 percent year-on-year, which is the highest growth in the past four years, according to a statement that Huawei sent to the Global Times on Monday.

Huawei reported sales revenue of 239 billion yuan ($36.7 billion) in 2013, up 8.5 percent compared with the previous year - the first time it reported higher total sales revenue compared to Sweden's Ericsson, whose sales revenue was around $35 billion in 2013.

"Huawei's strong performance in 2013 is mainly driven by its enterprise and consumer business," Ji Chendong, a Shanghai-based independent technology analyst, told the Global Times on Monday.

Huawei's carrier network business generated sales revenue of 166.5 billion yuan in 2013, up 4 percent year-on-year, while its enterprise and consumer businesses reported sales revenues of 15.2 billion yuan and 57 billion yuan, up 32.4 percent and 17.8 percent, respectively.

Xiang Ligang, CEO of telecom industry Web portal cctime.com, noted that growth in Huawei's networking building sector has entered into a rather stable phase but the enterprise and consumer sector represents bigger potential.

"An increasing number of companies in China, especially State-owned ones, are considering to use domestic telecom equipment makers as their suppliers given security concerns," Xiang told the Global Times.

Xiang was also upbeat about the company's performance in the consumer sector. He said that the mobile handsets sector is expected to account for half of the company's revenue in three to five years.

Huawei sold 48.8 million units of smartphones globally in 2013 - following Samsung and Apple - and accounted for 4.9 percent of the overall smartphone market, according to data from consultancy IDC in January.

Ji said the current switch to the fourth generation network (4G) in China presents a great opportunity for Huawei, which can benefit from 4G network deployment as well as 4G handset production.

Huawei said in the statement that 65 percent of the sales revenue was from overseas markets in 2013, slightly lower than the 66 percent in 2012.

The company has encountered major setbacks in some overseas markets such as the US. It announced in December that it had to withdraw from the US market as most Huawei products were shut out of the US market by the US government citing security concerns.

In China, Huawe's sales revenue increased by 14.2 percent year-on-year to 84 billion yuan in 2013.