After a strong 2019 first-half performance, Huawei seems to be even more confident and has announced to raise the budget for its research and development departments
After spending a staggering amount of over USD 120 million in research and development in the UK, Huawei plans to increase the numbers this year outspending its competitors.
This comes after a strong performance of the company in the first half 2019 where it managed to generate a revenue of USD 58.3 billion with year on year growth of 23% and achieving a net profit rate of 8.7%. Which clearly shows that the company continues to grow despite the sanctions by the Trump administration.
Huawei increased the global research and development budget which reached USD 18 billion an increase of 18%. Victor Zhang, Huawei’s President for Global Government Affairs, said at a press conference in London on Tuesday that the company would increase its R&D staff and R&D spending in the UK. This looks quite interesting after the announcement concerning the mass layoffs in the US.
“Our R&D budget for this year will be USD 18 billion, which is a really significant increase. Last year, we invested USD 15 billion. We rank as the fifth biggest company for research and development, according to a report by the European Commission.”
He also added, “That’s good news for the UK. Our commitment to investment and our ongoing activities in the UK will not change. We are committed to the UK on 5G but also in terms of the country’s fiber network rollout.”
According to Zhang, they also want to increase the number of people in research and development in the UK. At the moment, the number of Huawei’s R&D engineers in the UK is 400 which is 100 more than last year.
Huawei wants to dominate the next generation of wireless technology and it’s investing in numbers none of its competitors can match. Huawei’s 2018 R&D budget grew 149% in four years, out-doing all its competitors over the same period. Amazon’s was the only company with a larger R&D budget growth (210%).
According to Bloomberg, Huawei’s 2018 R&D budget accounted for 14 percent of its revenue, the second-highest proportion, after Alphabet and for the years from 2014 to 2018, Huawei ranked seventh in overall R&D expense at CNY 368 billion.