Huawei smartphone sales up 40%, revenues up almost a third, says Reuters

Reuters has pre-empted Huawei’s financial results, due to be released next month, citing an internal memo showing a 40% year-on-year increase in smartphone sales, with divisional revenue up almost a third to $11.8B.

The division shipped about 75 million smartphones in 2014, according to the year-end memo to employees sent by Richard Yu, the head of Huawei’s consumer business. Although that represented a more than 40 percent year-on-year increase, the figure lagged behind Huawei’s previously stated sales target of 80 million units.

While the company started life making low-end handsets, it later branched out into high-end smartphones, including the recently-announced Honor 6 Plus, closely modelled on Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus … 

The company is also upping its game with lower-end handsets, last month announcing that the Ascend Mate 2 would get a Lollipop upgrade in the first half of next year.

Huawei was, however, recently overtaken by rival Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi in global smartphone shipments, knocking it down into fifth place. It will be interesting to see the updated rankings next year.