Huawei Aims to Double LTE Sales in 2014

Huawei's wireless networks infrastructure group, which accounts for nearly a third of the company's business, believes it can double its 4G LTE revenues in 2014 to around US$4 billion.

During a briefing held late last week, David Wang, president of the Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. wireless business unit, said the company sold $5.58 billion in equipment and services during the first half of 2013, up 10% compared with the same period a year earlier, and is on track to hit its full year revenues target of $11.7 billion.

For 2014, the company has set a full-year wireless networks sales target of $12.9 billion, also up approximately 10%, and aims to double LTE revenue to $4 billion. Clearly, much of that is expected to come from the company's domestic market, where all three major operators are either already investing heavily in their 4G networks or set to do so in the coming year. (See China Issues 4G TDD Licences, APAC Fuels 4G Action and China Holds Key to LTE TDD.)

Market share shenanigans
Huawei also fired a salvo in the 4G market share war of words. In a list compiled by the company based on public information, it says it is the leading supplier in terms of commercial LTE networks launched, with 110 compared with 100 from Ericsson AB.

That duo are followed, according to Huawei's calculations, by Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) on 56 and Alcatel-Lucent on 24.

Huawei also says it is currently the second-placed supplier of commercially-launched EPC (evolved packet core) networks with 88, behind Ericsson on 94, and well ahead of Cisco Systems Inc., with 30 commercial deployments, and NSN on 29.

Naturally, each company has its own set of statistics to share: Ericsson also claims to be the 4G networks market leader, stating only days ago that "more than 180 LTE RAN and Evolved Packet Core networks have been delivered worldwide, of which more than 110 have gone live commercially." In addition, the Swedish vendor claims that "approximately 50% of the world's LTE smartphone traffic is served by Ericsson networks, which is more than double the traffic of its closest competitor."

In terms of the entire wireless infrastructure market, Huawei, quoting Dell'Oro Group , says it was second for RAN (radio access network) network sales during the first three quarters of 2013. Ericsson captured 37% of the market, Huawei 23% and NSN 17%.

Like its rivals, Huawei isn't resting on its 4G laurels. Wang reminded the market that the vendor is preparing to invest more than $600 million in 5G research during the next five years, stating that 5G will require 50Gbit/s of throughput per cellsite, up to 1,000 times more than 4G. (See Huawei CEO Pledges 5G R&D Investment.)

— Robert Clark, contributing editor, special to Light Reading