Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday said that its first-quarter revenue jumped 39 percent to 179.7 billion yuan (US$26.81 billion) in the Chinese technology firm’s first-ever quarterly results.
The Shenzhen-based firm, the world’s biggest telecoms equipment maker, also said its net profit margin was about 8 percent for the quarter, which was slightly higher than the same period last year.
Huawei did not disclose its actual net profit.
The limited results announcement comes at a time when Washington has intensified a campaign against unlisted Huawei, alleging that its equipment could be used for espionage and urging US allies to ban it from building next-generation 5G mobile networks.
The Chinese firm, which is also the world’s No. 3 smartphone maker, last week said the number of contracts it has won to provide 5G telecoms gear increased further, despite the US campaign.
By the end of last month, Huawei said it had signed 40 commercial 5G contracts with carriers, shipped more than 70,000 5G base stations to markets around the world and expects to have shipped 100,000 by next month.
Huawei’s network business last year saw its first drop in revenue in two years, but Guo Ping (郭平), rotating chairman of the company, has said he expects all three business groups — consumer, carrier and enterprise — to post double-digit growth this year.
Huawei also said that it had shipped 59 million smartphones in the first quarter. It did not disclose comparable figures from last year, but according to market research firm Strategy Analytics, Huawei shipped 39.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of last year.
Separately, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has postponed media events for its Galaxy Fold planned for this week in Hong Kong and Shanghai, a company official said, days after reviewers of the foldable handset reported defective samples.
The official did not elaborate on reasons or rescheduling.
Instead of plaudits ahead of the phone’s launch on April 26 in the US, the South Korean conglomerate has been blighted by technology journalists reporting breaks, bulges and blinking screens after using their samples for as little as a day.
The Samsung official said that the firm was investigating the damage reports as previously announced and declined to comment on whether there would be any change to the US release date.
The firm plans to begin South Korean and European sales next month, and Chinese sales from an undisclosed date.
Samsung has hailed the folding design as the future in a field that has seen few surprises since Apple Inc’s iPhone in 2007. Huawei has also announced a folding handset, the Mate X.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day