Liang Hua chairman Huawei said that Huawei will not back down, it aims to move forward, "we firmly believe that we will win."
World’s second-largest mobile phone vendor, Huawei’s released its market performance report for the first half of 2019, which has been a rollercoaster year for the company till now. According to Huawei the revenue grew 23% year on year to USD 58.3 billion and achieving a net profit rate of 8.7%. Huawei’s smartphone shipments recorded 118 million units in H1, up 24% year-over-year. This shows that the company continues to grow rapidly despite the sanctions by the Trump administration.
Liang Hua (梁华), chairman of Huawei, said that Huawei has achieved steady growth in the face of extremely unsettled situations. In the second half of this year, it will invest more manpower and resources to “invest in the future”. It is estimated that the company will invest a staggering CNY 120 billion in research and development.
Liang also admitted that Huawei faces huge difficulties ahead with consumer business to be most affected. The degree of difficulty will depend on whether the US government allows the company to continue using Google’s Android operating system in future handsets.
The company managed strong revenue growth of 39% in the first quarter, implying that its overall H1 momentum was decreased by Q2 performance. 59 million smartphones were shipped in the first quarter, which means the figure was also 59 million units in the second quarter.
Although Huawei sold 37.3 million handset units locally during Q2 than Q1 (29.9 million) according to data from market research firm Canalys, the domestic increase was apparently not large enough to overshadow the decline in international markets. Huawei’s founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei (任正非) himself predicted in June that the company’s overseas smartphone shipments would drop as much as 40%.
Huawei’s main competitors lagged behind with Apple 14% down with 5.7 million units, Xiaomi 20% down with 11.5 million units shipped, Vivo 19% down after shipments of 17.1 million units and Oppo 18% down after shipments of 17.9 million units.
“Huawei’s addition to the US Entity List caused uncertainty overseas, but in China, it has kept its foot on the accelerator,” said Mo Jia, an analyst at Canalys.