SHENZHEN, March 31 (Xinhua) -- China's technology firm Huawei said Friday that its 2016 sales had increased by 32 percent year on year to more than 521 billion yuan (75 billion U.S. dollars).
The company's net profit rose only 0.4 percent to 37 billion yuan due to a rising proportion of consumer sales and higher spending on marketing.
Consumer sales increased by 44 percent from a year earlier to 179.8 billion yuan. Its carrier business rose 24 percent to 290.6 billion yuan while enterprise sales added 47 percent to 40.7 billion yuan, according to Meng Wanzhou, Huawei CFO.
"Spending on research and development rose to 76.4 billion yuan in 2016, bringing total R&D investment to more than 310 billion yuan in the last 10 years," said Xu Zhijun, Huawei's rotating CEO, adding that the future annual R&D budget was expected to reach 10 to 20 billion dollars.
China's consumer market contributed 45 percent of Huawei's total revenue in 2016, followed by markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asian-Pacific region and America.
Headquartered in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, Huawei has become the world's largest telecom solution provider and is also the world's third smartphone brand, behind Apple and Samsung.
It operates in more than 170 countries and regions and employs about 170,000 people worldwide.
