(Yicai) April 1 -- China’s Huawei Technologies had slower revenue growth last year, as muted gains at its core infrastructure and consumer businesses and a modest fall in cloud computing income weighed on earnings. The telecom equipment giant said “overall performance remained steady.”

Revenue rose 2.2 percent to CNY880.9 billion (USD126 billion) in the 12 months ended Dec. 31, the company’s second-highest on record, its annual report revealed yesterday. Huawei’s revenue grew 22 percent in 2024. Net profit rose 8.7 percent to CNY68 billion (USD9.7 billion) last year.

“Our overall performance was in line with forecast,” Chairman Liang Hua said in a message in the Shenzhen-based company’s annual report. “We achieved our business goals, laying a solid foundation for the company's sustainable development.”

Huawei’s infrastructure business, its largest revenue contributor, saw income rise 2.6 percent to CNY375 million, while consumer business income rose 1.6 percent to CNY344 million. Cloud computing revenue edged down 3.5 percent to CNY32.2 billion. Huawei Cloud continues to build secure, reliable, trusted, and innovative cloud services, the company said.

“Over the past year, we further honed our competitive edge while maintaining strategic focus,” Liang pointed out. “We stayed on the path of high-quality development, with a firm commitment to succeeding through quality. We worked hard to provide competitive products and services for customers around the world.”

Operating cash flow reached CNY127.4 billion, up 44 percent, while cash and short-term investments shrank 13 percent to CNY361.4 billion.

Research and development expenses rose 7 percent to record CNY192.3 billion, equal to nearly 22 percent of revenue. Over the past decade, Huawei spent more than CNY1.38 trillion (USD200 billion) on R&D. As of Dec. 31, it had around 114,000 R&D staff, making up more than half its total.

“We continued to increase investment in future-oriented basic research and innovation in domains such as artificial intelligence, communications technologies, smart devices, and intelligent automotive solutions,” Huawei noted.

“AI might just be the last major technological revolution in human history," said Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's rotating chairwoman. "We believe that this will be the biggest development opportunity over the next decade -- even beyond -- and also the most promising strategic opportunity.”

Huawei’s 147-page annual report used the term “AI” 421 times. In its 2024 report the most frequently used terms were still “intelligentization” or “intelligence,” which appeared 132 times.

Huawei has one of the world's largest patent portfolios, holding 165,000 active granted patents in multiple major standard fields, including cellular communications, short-distance communications, and audio and video codecs. Hundreds of companies have obtained licenses to Huawei's patents by signing over 260 agreements.

Business Segments

AI is being integrated into almost all aspects of life and work, Huawei noted, adding that industries are undergoing intelligent transformation, where AI is evolving from office assistants to an integral part of core production systems.

“We are committed to solving industry challenges with AI, and we provide AI infrastructure, agentic models, and an industry agent enablement platform for customers, partners, and developers,” it said.

In China, Huawei Cloud serves the country's six major banks, 12 joint-stock commercial banks, five top insurance institutions, 95 percent of the top 30 automakers, over 90 percent of the top 50 internet firms, and 85 percent of retailers, according to data provided by the company.

The firm continued to advance its strategy for delivering an intelligent experience to consumers across all scenarios, leveraging its broad service portfolio covering smartphones, tablets, personal computers, wearables, and Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance vehicles.

As of Dec. 31, more than 36 million devices ran on HarmonyOS 5 and 6, more than 10 million developers had registered with the HarmonyOS ecosystem, and the number of apps and services available in AppGallery exceeded 350,000, covering 18 vertical domains.

The intelligent automotive solutions business was Huawei's fastest-growing last year, with revenue climbing 72 percent to more than CNY45 billion. HIMA delivered more than 430,000 vehicles in 2025, and the Qiankun intelligent driving system served more than 1.4 million passenger cars, accumulating nearly seven billion kilometers of assisted driving mileage.

The business had been in the red for a long time, but head Richard Yu has publicly committed to achieving profitability in 2025.

Revenue from the digital power business climbed 13 percent to CNY77.3 billion, while that from other businesses plunged 76 percent to CNY7 billion (USD1 billion).

By region, China remained Huawei's core market, contributing CNY616.2 billion of revenue, basically unchanged from the year before. Meanwhile, income from Europe and the Middle East rose 8.8 percent to CNY161.4 billion, and that from Asia Pacific jumped 16 percent to CNY50.1 billion.

Future Strategy

While pursuing definite opportunities, Huawei will maintain its strategic focus, staying committed to its strategy, proceeding steadily, and prioritizing hardware as its main revenue source, Meng said. “We need to control the boundaries of our development, hone our competitive edge, and build a solid foundation -- fertile, silicon-based soil.”

This year, Huawei will continue to build a stronger foundational ecosystem, according to Meng.

"High quality is the cornerstone of Huawei's survival and development," she noted. “We will keep improving the quality of our products, manufacturing, services, networks, and business operations in our pursuit of end-to-end, high-quality development.”

"Moving forward, we will continue to ramp up R&D investment in strategic domains like connectivity, computing, cloud, devices, intelligent driving, and AI," Liang said. “We aim to hone our competitive edge by integrating AI and security into our products and networks, and build industry ecosystems around Ascend, Kunpeng, and HarmonyOS that thrive on collaboration and shared success.”

Huawei Cloud remains strategically focused, investing heavily in AI and computing power, as the company works to address the diverse needs of customers, partners, and developers, and brings leading AI services to the market, Liang noted.

Editor: Futura Costaglione