• Various US administrations have been trying to squash Huawei Technologies for years, through sanctions and political pressure
• But following an initial hit a few years ago, the Chinese vendor is now growing again at an incredible pace 
• Comments from the vendor’s chairman suggest Huawei’s annual sales increased by 22% in 2024

Despite years of US trade sanctions, political pressure, outright bans and network infrastructure swap-outs, Chinese telecom and tech vendor Huawei Technologies has not just survived, it has thrived, if comments from the company’s chairman Liang Hua are anything to go by. 

The years-long story of concerted pressure led by various US White House administrations is well known and reported and, without doubt, has had a considerable impact on Huawei’s ability to win and retain business outside its domestic market, where it has long been and continues to be the major supplier of communications network infrastructure to China’s telcos as well as many enterprises. And while the trade sanctions and decisions by various governments and companies to either restrict or ban Huawei as a supplier did impact the Chinese vendor’s revenues for a few years, it also forced the company into a strategic rethink that appears to be paying off. 

According to this Reuters report, Huawei’s chairman told attendees at a business forum in Guangzhou, China, that the vendor’s 2024 revenues exceeded 860bn yuan ($118bn), a 22% year-on-year increase from the 704.2bn yuan ($96.6bn) in revenues that Huawei reported for the full year 2023, and 34% higher than the 642.3bn yuan in revenues reported for 2022. 

Reuters, which verified the reported sales number with Huawei officials, reported that Liang told the forum that “in 2024, Huawei’s overall operations will meet expectations, ICT infrastructure will remain stable, consumer business will return to growth, and the smart car solution business will develop rapidly, with annual sales revenue exceeding 860 billion yuan.”

With the telecom network infrastructure sector offering little (if anything) by way of growth to the vendor sector, the bulk of Huawei’s sales hike is likely to have come from its enterprise technology sales and, most particularly, from its resurgent Consumer division, which includes its smartphone sales. Having sold its Honor mobile phone business in 2020 to protect it from trade sanctions, Huawei has since rebuilt its smartphone division, working around the ban on using US technology, and has been ramping up sales in international markets as well as China. According to a new report from research house Omdia, Huawei shipped 48.4 million smartphones in 2024 (a year-on-year increase of almost 36%) to give it a global market share of 4%.  

Huawei provides a detailed breakdown of its financial performance each year in its audited annual report, which is usually published around late March or early April. 

- Ray Le Maistre, Editorial Director, TelecomTV