Huawei rides high despite its security mauling

Huawei claims it's aiming for 10 per cent revenue growth in 2013 off the back of a 10.8 per cent lift in first half sales. The growth won't be at the expense of profit either - the company says it expects a net profit margin of between 7 and 8 per cent, up from about 7 per cent in 2012 when Huawei reported a 22 per cent profits shortfall due to the prevailing global economic conditions.

"Our success in the first half of 2013 was mainly driven by the steady growth of the carrier network business, the expansion of the enterprise business, and the fast growth of the Consumer business," said Huawei's CFO Cathy Meng.

The Chinese market itself is a biggy. Analysts estimate that the continuing build-out of LTE could bag Huawei another few billions - China Mobile is planning to spend US$7 billion on LTE this year alone.

The message is that everything that can grow is growing, including (perhaps not so coincidentally) a rising clamour for Huawei to be shut out of any crucial western infrastructure supply on the back of security concerns.

Since late last year Huawei has been the subject of a whole series of accusations from a variety of quarters, all citing the technology giant's founder's roots in the Red Army and alleging ongong collusion between Huawei and China's intelligence services.

The UK government is planing to probe Huawei's UK-based Cyber Security Evaluation Centre in Banbury on fears that the UK telecoms network (a big buyer of Huawei kit) might be vulnerable to cyberattacks and state spying.

And of course there have been accusations that Huawei has been actively spying for the Chinese government in the US - that culminated in a Congressional Report urging carriers there not to buy Huawei kit, effectively shutting Huawei out.

Most recently, spy/whistleblower of the moment, Edward Snowden (the man lurking in Moscow Airport's duty free area) has been claiming the spying traffic is not all one way. Snowden says that, in addition to the U.S. government's hoovering up of US citizens' phone and Internet usage data, it's also been hacking Chinese targets, including its telecom companies.