Huawei has announced a full-year net profit of 47.5 billion yuan for 2017, up 22.7 percent from the 37.1 billion yuan reported[1] a year earlier, attributing the result to its smartphones, enterprise solutions, and the digital transformation across industries.
The Chinese networking giant brought in 603.6 billion yuan ($92.5 billion) revenue during the year, up 15.7 percent from 521.6 billion yuan in 2016.
A breakdown of its revenue saw its carrier business grow by the smallest amount, rising by just 2.5 percent year on year to bring in 297.8 billion yuan.
"Through advancements in technology like 5G, we are helping telecom networks connect more people, more homes, and more organisations. Ultimately, we aim to position telecom networks as the basic infrastructure of the digital world," Huawei rotating CEO Ken Hu said in the results report [PDF][2], with Huawei unveiling its first 5G customer premises equipment[3] during MWC in February.
During the year, Huawei said it conducted pre-commercial 5G tests with more than 30 carriers in over 10 cities; signed more than 350 network function virtualisation (NFV) and 380 software-defined networking (SDN) contracts; deployed over 30 CloudAIR commercial networks; rolled out more than 500,000 narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) base stations across the globe; worked with 1,000 partners on its "IoT ecosystem"; and shipped over 1 million Boudica NB-IoT chips per month.
As of the end of 2017, Huawei had also deployed more than 120 4.5G networks across the world, including for Deutsche Telekom, China Telecom, LG U+, and EE.
"5G has entered the commercial deployment stage. The Internet of Things (IoT), video, cloud, and other innovative technologies are seeing widespread adoption and reshaping every industry," Huawei added, remaining positive that