Chinese equipment vendor Huawei has posted 2007 revenues of US$12.56 billion, a 48 percent increase on the previous year. Light Reading claims that such sales confirm its position as the fifth-largest telecom equipment vendor in the world, with a gross margin of 33.9 percent and a 32 percent increase in net income to US$674 million.

The Light Reading article also mentions the following statistics of note from Huawei’s 2007 report: it ended 2007 with nearly US$1.7 billion in ‘cash and cash equivalents,’ up from just more than US$1 billion a year earlier; the company claims that growth in US$16 billion ‘contract sales’ (signed contracts, as opposed to actual revenue) was driven primarily by international markets (72 percent); it says it has deployed 100,000 ‘green’ mobile basestations that, to date, have saved the equivalent of 170,000 tons of coal in power consumption; it claims to have won 45 percent of all new UMTS/HSPA mobile infrastructure contracts during 2007, and 44.8 percent of all new CDMA infrastructure deals; finally, the vendor signed 34 managed services contracts during 2007, including customers such as Vodafone, China Mobile, Etisalat and MTN Group. For 2008, Huawei estimates its contract sales total will be as high as US$23 billion.