Report: Huawei on track to hit 100M smartphone sales in 2015, as first-half revenue booms
By Phil Goldstein
Huawei is ahead of schedule on reaching its goal of 100 million smartphone shipments in 2015, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters. The report comes as the Chinese smartphone and network equipment vendor posted first-half results that showed the strongest sales growth in five years.
Huawei has had monthly global smartphone shipments of more than 10 million units every month since May, the head of the company's consumer business, Richard Yu, wrote to staff in a memo sent on Monday, according to a Reuters report. A Huawei spokeswoman declined to comment beyond the company's statement on its first-half results.
If Huawei hits the goal of 100 million smartphone shipments in 2015, it would be significant because the company has a history of failing to meet its own smartphone shipment projections. For 2014, the company had said it would ship 80 million smartphones, and wound up shipping 75 million. In 2013 the company said it expected 60 million smartphone shipments, and ended up shipping 52 million. In 2012, Huawei had forecast it would ship 50-60 million smartphone units but wound up shipping 32 million.
According to research firm Gartner, Huawei was the No. 4 smartphone player in the world in the first quarter with 18.1 million smartphone shipments and 5.4 percent market share, behind Samsung Electronics, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Lenovo.
Huawei executives have said the firm doesn't want to sacrifice profitability for the sake of volume growth in smartphones. Huawei aims to expand its business beyond Asia and Europe and truly crack the U.S. smartphone market this year. Zhiqiang Xu, president of Huawei Device USA, said in April that the company aims to eventually be the No 3 smartphone player in the U.S.
Meanwhile, Huawei posted a 30 percent year-over-year jump in first-half revenue to $28.3 billion (175.9 billion yuan) and said it would achieve "effective growth" in 2015. According to the Financial Times, the 30 percent growth rate is the highest recorded rate of expansion for the period since Huawei started reporting half-year revenue figures in 2011. The last time Huawei posted a comparable growth was in 2008, when annual sales revenues rose by one-third year-over-year.
"Huawei achieved stable and healthy growth in all of its three business segments," Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou said in a statement, referring to the company's telecom, consumer device and enterprise business segments. "We are confident that we will maintain effective growth and steady and healthy development in all business segments in 2015."
"Huawei's mid-range and high-end smartphones, Mate7 and P8 in particular, as well as Honor-branded phones, have made solid progress, helping us guarantee quality and sustainable growth in the consumer business," Meng added in the statement.
