It shouldn’t really come as a surprise to anyone that Huawei had a ripper year in 2015, culminating in what can only have been a very profitable fourth quarter buoyed by the Huawei Nexus 6P’s resounding success. Huawei has confirmed that it’s annual revenue rose to approximately $60.1 billion USD, an increase of more than 35% on its 2014 revenues.
Though Huawei’s report is a bit light on detail, Huawei’s acting CEO, Guo Ping, was quoted as saying the company experienced a “solid increase in profits and cash flow”, confirming that Huawei’s success in the consumer sphere is contributing to some serious financial results. During Q3 last year, Huawei overtook Xiaomi as the biggest seller of smartphones in the Chinese market. On top of this, Huawei’s Honor brand knocked off others to become the second biggest phone brand in Europe.
Huawei’s well known Nexus 6P and Huawei Watch brands are evidence that 2016 will be a big year for the Chinese manufacturer, which has long existed in the carrier and networking space, and is increasing its reach into an ever burgeoning consumer mobile sector.
If Huawei can capitalise on their existing success and knock out a few more stellar products this year, Huawei could well cement its place as a major household name in both the eastern and western markets; a fact the likes of Samsung and LG (amongst others) are likely well aware of.
Samsung sat on around 400 million mobile shipments last year, which still dwarfs Huawei’s 100 million, but with the launch of the Honor brand in the US this year, and success in wearables and other consumer devices, Huawei could well drag a good number of customers away from the incumbents.
I highly doubt the success or majority of profits is due to the 6P. I’ve never seen any nexus to the top5-10 seller here or in the US. And with the prices Google is asking for in the EU, I doubt it’s in the top5-10 either.