Huawei Australia has record year despite 5G woes

Huawei recorded its best annual results in Australia in its 15 years of operation during 2018, despite the government decision banning it from the nation’s 5G rollouts.

The Chinese telecommunications vendor’s Australian subsidiary, Huawei Australia, reported an 18% increase in sales revenues for the year to $735 million.

Huawei’s carrier equipment sales increased 20% for the year on the back of strong contract wins by Optus and Vodafone. Enterprise business sales grew 19% as a result of Huawei’s $136 million contract win to provide 4G communications systems for the Perth Metro rail network.

Consumer equipment sales meanwhile grew 20% year-on-year as a result of strong growth in demand for the vendor’s high-end smartphones.

Huawei Australia Chairman John Lord said the company has performed well despite its political woes. In August, Huawei and fellow Chinese vendor ZTE were both banned from providing equipment for Australia’s 5G rollout due to currently unproven concerns that they could be compelled to use its equipment to enable cyberspying by the Chinese government.

This reflects the challenges Huawei is facing across the ‘Five Eyes’ countries and beyond. In November, New Zealand rejected an application from mobile operator Spark to use Huawei equipment in its 5G deployments. Meanwhile, Huawei has also been banned from providing equipment for US government use and its CFO has been hit with criminal charges over an alleged earlier conspiracy to sell equipment with US components to Iran in violation of US sanctions.

And in the UK, where Huawei has long had a cordial relationship with the government, there are reports that the US is pressuring the UK government to reverse this policy by threatening to stop sharing intelligence if Teresa May approves Huawei supplying 5G equipment for the nation’s rollouts.

“It’s fair to say we had a challenging year on the political front, but our Australian customers valued and trusted our world-leading technology and purchased it in record numbers,” Lord said.

“Huawei technology is cutting edge, safe and secure, and that’s why we have become the largest supplier of mobile network infrastructure in Australia. These results make it very clear Huawei is the leading supplier of innovative telecommunications solutions and it’s a great shame Australians will miss out on our 5G technology.”

Meanwhile, Huawei Australia also promoted long-serving Huawei executive Haosheng Liu as its new CEO. Liu was most recently CEO of Huawei Indonesia, and has also served in roles including CEO of Huawei Belgium and Deputy Managing Director of Huawei Germany.

Pictured: Huawei Australia's new CEO, Haosheng Liu.

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