Huawei forecasts $70b in revenue

Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd reassured worldwide analysts that it will maintain fast and stable growth in the coming years, despite facing a lot of uncertainty in the North American market.

Huawei said revenue should rise by 10 percent year-on-year and hit $70 billion by 2018, according to Chen Fanchang, vice-president of Huawei's accounting department.

Chen made the remarks during an analysts' conference on Wednesday in Shenzhen, where the company is headquartered.

Though Huawei enjoyed robust development in both the network and consumer businesses in Latin American countries, its sales in the Americas overall slipped by 1.3 percent year-on-year to reach 31.4 billion yuan ($5.1 billion) in 2013. The United States has long accused Huawei of being "a threat to national securities" and has kept it from entering the country's telecom gear market.

Bryan Wang, principal analyst at Forrester Market Advisory (Beijing) Co Ltd, said North America remains a big uncertainty in terms of Huawei's realizing its future goals. "Every company hopes for the best, but the final result depends on what really takes place," Wang said.

Huawei, however, does hold some cards it can use to reach its target, he said. "The Chinese market will provide the most support for Huawei's revenue growth, thanks to the nation's 4G network deployment," he said. Huawei also had a vast business network, covering more than 100 countries, which will aid in the sales of its smartphones, Wang added.

Eric Xu, Huawei's executive vice-president and one of its rotating CEOs, said security issues are not likely to have a big impact on Huawei's business growth.

"But it has an impact on workloads, in communicating with and persuading current industry stakeholders (that products are secure), and that's more tiresome," Xu was quoted as saying in a Reuters report.

For Huawei, there are enormous opportunities to keep steady growth as new technologies reshape the world and a new wave of technological development is introduced, according to William Xu, Huawei's chief strategy marketing officer.

"Connectivity becomes increasingly important and a way of life," Xu said. Iinformation and communications technologies, represented by mobile broadband, cloud computing, big data analytics, the Internet of things and social networking, will become more deeply embedded in everyday life and across all industries, Xu said.

Huawei forecast that by 2025, the world will have 8 billion smartphone users and 100 billion terminals connected by the Internet. Chen at Huawei said the company will keep focusing on its pipeline strategy, which is largely related to telecom infrastructure and services.

Established in the 1980s, Huawei has now built up a solid relationship with telecom carriers worldwide, helping them to deploy networks with different mobile standards. Huawei is researching 5G and cloud computing technologies to cater to future development.

The consumer business, or the smartphone business, contributed one-quarter of Huawei's total sales last year. Huawei now is the world's third-largest smartphone vendor, but branding is still a major problem for the company in order to capture more clients.

Shao Yang, chief marketing officer of Huawei's consumer business group, said it has increased brand awareness of its consumer products significantly over the years.

Huawei aims to increase its brand awareness by 30 percent in 2014 globally, he said.

Contact the writer at Sophie He@chinadaily.com.cn and shenjngting@chinadaily.com.cn