Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. can now lay claim to being the world's leading supplier of telecom hardware and software, following the publication of its sales for the first half of this year. (See Huawei Increases H1 Sales by 4.5%.)

There are no doubt a number of variables that make the comparisons slightly uneven -- particularly the breadth of portfolios (Huawei has made a big push in the enterprise technology and mobile devices sectors in the past year) and the impact of currency exchange rates. But at a basic level, and using the U.S. dollar as the unifying global currency, the Chinese vendor is now bigger than Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC).

While, at current exchange rates, Huawei's reported revenues for the first six months of 2012 total US$16.1 billion, Ericsson's come in at $15.25 billion (106.3 billion Swedish kronor). (See Ericsson Sets Q2 Benchmark.)

Nokia Networks , with first-half revenues of $8 billion (€6.59 billion) is some way off the pace, and Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE: ALU) and ZTE Corp. (Shenzhen: 000063; Hong Kong: 0763), which haven't yet reported their second-quarter sales, will not be troubling the leading duo. (See Restructuring Costs Hit NSN's Q2.)

Table 1: Vendor Ranking by H1 2012 Revenues (in US$)

AlcaLu reported first-quarter revenues of €3.2 billion ($3.9 billion) and is expected to report sales of around €3.5 billion ($4.23 billion) for the second quarter when it reports its latest earnings on July 26. (See AlcaLu Issues Full-Year Profit Warning and Bad Start to 2012 for AlcaLu.)

ZTE stated recently that its revenues for the first six months of 2012 will be greater than the RMB 37 billion ($5.8 billion) it recorded a year ago.

— Ray Le Maistre, International Managing Editor, Light Reading