LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL ANALYST SUMMIT 2015: Huawei’s devices business must focus on profitability, rather than looking purely for shipment growth, Eric Xu, deputy chairman and rotating CEO of the Chinese vendor, said.

“We don’t expect our consumer business to grow too fast. We want every step they make to be very stable,” he noted.

Huawei’s devices business has seen a “considerable improvement” in the recent past, which has given it the confidence to grow the unit. “But our requirements of the consumer business continue to hold: it has to be profitable,” Xu said.

Last year, the company shipped 75 million smartphones, representing strong year-on-year growth. And it has also worked hard to bolster its position in the more lucrative premium smartphone space, with its P-series flagship line, and Mate phablet range.

For all its talk about profitability, Huawei is still looking for volume growth from the unit, with the figure of 100 million smartphones given for this year.

It was noted that at last year’s Global Analyst Summit, the Consumer Business Group which houses Huawei’s handset business had come in for some criticism internally, with concern that it was not as “down to earth” as it could be.

“Luckily, the criticism I made last year actually worked,” Xu said.

But he also warned that “one of the things I want to see the least” in the units is complacency, off the back of its success to date.