Huawei announced an impressive milestone at CES 2016, as the company became the first Chinese OEM to top 100 million smartphones shipped in a year.
The company shipped 108 million smartphones in 2015, despite a sluggish market that challenged more heavyweight players such as Apple and Samsung.
Huawei's target was to ship 100 million smartphones in calendar year 2015, and it managed to exceed its goal. Announcing its results at the CES 2016 trade show in Las Vegas, the company revealed that it shipped 108 million smartphones in total in calendar year 2015, raking in more than $20 billion in revenue. This means that Huawei saw a whopping increase of nearly 70 percent in revenue compared to 2014, achieving a 44 percent rise in smartphone shipments from the previous year.
Strong sales in China and Western Europe fueled this impressive growth, and Huawei continues to make notable efforts to target the higher-end premium smartphone market rather than positioning itself as yet another budget handset maker, as it previously had.
Huawei's performance is even more impressive considering that it comes at a time when top OEMs are bracing for a challenging year. Samsung, for instance, recently said it expects a tough year ahead due to increased competition and weak global economy.
As impressive as Huawei's latest achievements may be, however, analysts are still not sure whether the Chinese handset maker can indeed become a serious competitor to Apple and Samsung.
"In China it's true that Huawei grew tremendously over the past six months, but it's a bit of a dog fight within the Android ecosystem," said analyst Carolina Milanesi from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, as cited by Reuters.
The analyst further added that Huawei is gunning for Xiaomi and other smaller players on the Android market, but it's too early to tell whether it will be able to go up against the big guys.
For now, Samsung is the dominant leader of the smartphone market, with a 23.8 percent share, followed by Apple with 13.5 percent, and Huawei as a distant third with 7.5 percent, according to IDC.
Nevertheless, Huawei is betting big on its consumer business group, which handles smartphones, tablets and other such products, and it seems to be going strong. Not only did it raise interest with its Nexus 6P smartphone for Google, but Huawei also has plenty of other ambitious endeavors to push its products further toward the top. In the latest example, the company took advantage of CES 2016 to unveil its latest Huawei Mate 8 phablet, the audio-centric MediaPad M2 10 tablet, as well as a new Huawei watch line.
By the looks of it, Huawei is on an upward trend and seems to be going strong, and we wouldn't be too surprised if it managed to pose some real threats to the likes of Samsung and Apple in the future.
