Huawei said it achieved a record profit in 2020 despite being blacklisted in the US and barred from the UK’s 5G infrastructure.
This success can be partly attributed to Huawei’s enterprise segment, which despite providing relatively small revenue in comparison to the tech giant’s two other business groups, managed to achieve a 23% year-on-year growth with full-year revenues of £11 billion.
By comparison, Huawei’s consumer business segment grew by only 3.3%, while its carrier segment experienced minuscule growth of 0.2%.
Nevertheless, the company didn’t manage to completely brush off the difficulties of the past 12 months. Huawei’s total year-on-year growth was half of what it had generated for the year prior, plunging from 5.6% for 2019 to 3.2% for 2020, at £7.19 billion.
The tech giant’s growth was largely driven by its home market, with a 15.4% rise in revenue in China. Elsewhere, the business declined considerably, with revenues down by 12.2% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Huawei suffered the most severe drop of 24.5% in the US, likely as a result of the trade restrictions imposed by former president Donald Trump.
Huawei's rotating chairman Ken Hu said that “over the past year”, the company had “held strong in the face of adversity”.
“We've kept innovating to create value for our customers, to help fight the pandemic, and to support both economic recovery and social progress around the world. We also took this opportunity to further enhance our operations, leading to a performance that was largely in line with forecast,” he added.
According to Huawei VP Victor Zhang, one of the key reasons for Huawei maintaining “growth and profitability is that many countries trust us as a partner to deliver next-generation connectivity for their citizens – connectivity that delivers crucial economic and social benefits”.
“After 20 years in the UK we remain committed to our vision of a fully connected and intelligent world for every home, person and organisation,” he added.
