Huawei 2024 revenue surges to near-record high on smartphone comeback

Huawei on Monday reported a sharp jump in 2024 revenue as its core telecommunications and consumer businesses accelerated.

Huawei reported revenue for 2024 of 862.1 billion Chinese yuan ($118.2 billion), a 22.4% year-on-year rise.

It is the company’s second-highest revenue figure ever, according to calculations, just shy of the record 891.4 billion yuan reported for 2020.

Net profit fell, however, to 62.6 billion yuan, a decline of 28% versus 2023. Huawei said this was a result of increasing investments.

It comes as the Chinese technology giant tries to adapt its business to deal with U.S. sanctions that have restricted its access to key technologies like semiconductors.

Huawei spent 179.7 billion yuan on research and development, equating to 20.8% of its revenue. That’s higher than 2023’s 164.7 billion R&D figure. Huawei has been diversifying its business in areas including data centers for AI, cloud computing and automotive technology.

Huawei’s sales last year were driven by its two biggest businesses — ICT infrastructure and consumer — which together account for around 82% of the company’s total revenue.

Revenue at the ICT infrastructure division, which includes its carrier business, rose 4.9% year-on-year to 369.9 billion yuan. This is the Shenzhen headquartered-firm’s biggest business by revenue. Huawei is one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment companies and the company said large-scale deployment of next-generation 5G networks had helped drive growth.

The company also said that 2024 was the first year of commercial deployment of next-generation networks, dubbed 5.5G or 5G advanced, which also helped give sales a boost.

An acceleration in Huawei’s consumer business also aided its revenue figures. The consumer business raked in sales of 339 billion yuan, a 38.3% rise and a sharp acceleration from the growth seen last year.

Huawei, once the world’s biggest smartphone player, saw its smartphone business in particular crushed by U.S. sanctions that restricted its access to key chips and Google software.

From the end of 2023, however, a semiconductor breakthrough in China allowed Huawei to regroup and release high-end phones that have sold very well domestically.

In 2024, Huawei’s smartphone shipments in China jumped 37% year-on-year, while its market share rose to 16% from 12% in 2023, according to data from Canalys. This came at the expense of Apple, which saw its market share decline and shipments fall.

Huawei has aggressively launched premium smartphones, including the first-ever trifold handset, and has also begun to slowly relaunch devices overseas.

Meanwhile, Huawei also released HarmonyOS 5 in 2024, the first version of its self-developed mobile operating system that reportedly no longer uses any open-source code from Google Android.

Still, analysts have told that Huawei’s overseas prospects remain a challenge given its lack of access to Android, which runs on the majority of the world’s smartphones, and continued restrictions in accessing the most cutting-edge chips, such as those found in Apple and Samsung devices.

To mitigate some of the effects of U.S. sanctions over the past few years, Huawei has been pushing into new areas such as its digital power division, which includes a focus on energy infrastructure in areas such as electric cars and renewables.

This segment — still a very new business — saw revenue rise 24.4% to 68.7 billion yuan.

Cloud computing revenue, meanwhile, rose 8.5% year-on-year.

Huawei’s smallest business, called Intelligent Automotive Solution, reported a 474.4% year-on-year rise in revenue to 26.4 billion yuan. Huawei develops in-car software as well as driver assistance systems for third-party automakers.