Aggressive overseas expansion pays off as telecoms giant looks to build partnerships with foreign market leaders
Huawei Technologies, China's largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer, yesterday declined to upgrade its sales forecasts for the remainder of the year despite reporting stellar growth for the first six months.
Huawei reported 85 per cent year on year sales growth to 33 billion yuan in the period, more than half its projected full-year sales of US$7 billion to US$8 billion.
Overseas sales accounted for 61 per cent of total sales - US$2.47 billion - exceeding US$2.28 billion for the whole of last year.
'The numbers simply make us more confident of meeting those targets in the second half of the year,' Huawei spokesman Fu Jun said, adding that the competitive market in which the company operates remained challenging.
Huawei has been expanding aggressively into overseas markets, winning contracts in emerging markets ranging from Algeria to Turkmenistan.
But the company has also enjoyed more success in developed markets recently, and is included on a shortlist of eight vendors vying for contracts for BT's 21st century internet-protocol network project.