Huawei Investment & Holding Co., Ltd.
2024 Annual Report
In 2024, the entire team at Huawei banded together to tackle a wide range of external challenges, while further improving product quality, operations quality, and operational efficiency. Our performance was in line with forecast. We'd like to thank our customers around the world for your ongoing trust. Our thanks also go to our suppliers, partners, and the developer community for working together with us, and to consumers for your affirmation and support. And of course, we want to thank the entire Huawei team for all your hard work, and your families and loved ones for their unwavering support.
Meng Wanzhou
Rotating Chairwoman
The intelligent world is approaching fast, creating incredible opportunities and challenges. As always, we will maintain strategic focus and keep building up our core competitive edge. We are working hard to establish our competitive advantages in different business domains and bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.
Liang Hua
Chairman of the Board
Financial Performance
Our overall performance was in line with forecast.
Five-Year Financial Highlights
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (USD Million) | (CNY Million) | (CNY Million) | ||||
| Revenue | 118,162 | 862,072 | 704,174 | 642,338 | 636,807 | 891,368 |
| Operating profit | 10,878 | 79,361 | 104,401 | 42,216 | 121,412 | 72,501 |
| Operating margin | 9.2% | 9.2% | 14.8% | 6.6% | 19.1% | 8.1% |
| Net profit | 8,577 | 62,574 | 86,950 | 35,562 | 113,718 | 64,649 |
| Cash flow from operating activities | 12,119 | 88,417 | 69,807 | 17,797 | 59,670 | 35,218 |
| Cash and short-term investments | 51,021 | 372,232 | 475,317 | 373,452 | 416,334 | 357,366 |
| Working capital | 43,749 | 319,178 | 421,662 | 344,938 | 376,923 | 299,062 |
| Total assets | 176,837 | 1,290,149 | 1,263,597 | 1,063,804 | 982,971 | 876,854 |
| Total borrowings | 36,305 | 264,871 | 308,414 | 197,144 | 175,100 | 141,811 |
| Equity | 74,649 | 544,619 | 507,568 | 437,076 | 414,652 | 330,408 |
| Liability ratio | 57.8% | 57.8% | 59.8% | 58.9% | 57.8% | 62.3% |
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Note: These financial figures are from the consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with IFRS Accounting Standards. CNY amounts are converted into United States dollars ("USD") using the closing rate at the end of 2024 of USD1.00 = CNY7.2957. |
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By Business Segment
| (CNY Million) | 2024 | 2023 | YoY | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ICT Infrastructure | 369,903 | 352,756 | 4.9% | |||
| Consumer | 339,006 | 245,134 | 38.3% | |||
| Cloud Computing | 38,523 | 35,514 | 8.5% | |||
| Digital Power | 68,678 | 55,229 | 24.4% | |||
| Intelligent Automotive Solution | 26,353 | 4,588 | 474.4% | |||
| Other | 19,609 | 10,953 | 79.0% | |||
| Total | 862,072 | 704,174 | 22.4% | |||
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Note: During 2024, our revenue derived from the cloud computing business, including revenue from other Huawei segments, amounted to CNY68,801 million. |
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By Region
| (CNY Million) | 2024 | 2023 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| China | 615,264 | 471,303 | 30.5% |
| EMEA | 148,355 | 145,343 | 2.1% |
| Asia Pacific | 43,306 | 41,041 | 5.5% |
| Americas | 36,301 | 35,362 | 2.7% |
| Other | 18,846 | 11,125 | 69.4% |
| Total | 862,072 | 704,174 | 22.4% |
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Research and Innovation
Every year, Huawei invests over 10% of its sales revenue into R&D.
20.8%
In 2024, our total R&D spending reached CNY179.7 billion, representing 20.8% of our total revenue.
CNY1.249 trillion
Our total R&D investment over the last decade now exceeds CNY1.249 trillion.
54.1%
On December 31, 2024, 113,000 employees (about 54.1% of our workforce) worked in R&D.
150,000+
Through years of sustained innovation in fundamental domains, Huawei has become one of the world's largest patent holders, currently holding 150,000+ active granted patents.
Business Highlights
In the connectivity domain, we managed to overcome cyclical downturns in industry investment, maintaining solid business results. With 10 years of preparation in the computing domain, we were able to seize new opportunities in AI and achieve substantial growth. Our devices are now back in the fast lane, and we are making historic breakthroughs in HarmonyOS ecosystem development. We continued to optimize our business mix for cloud computing, and our digital power kept forging ahead, placing quality before all else. Our intelligent automotive solutions turned a profit in 2024 for the first time.
Driving Ubiquitous Connectivity
- We worked with carriers and partners around the world to continue driving 5G's business success. By the end of 2024, the total number of 5G users worldwide exceeded 2.1 billion. We worked with carriers to drive 5G development through business-network synergy, while engaging in continuous innovation to improve network experience and working to further unlock the value of mobile Internet. Infrastructure supported by 5G general and private networks was also used to overhaul production across more industries, improving productivity, security, and work environments.
- We worked with carriers worldwide to deploy 5.5G networks and tap into new scenarios of experience monetization such as livestreaming, gaming, subway coverage, and business travel. Together, we explored ways to create new value and ushered in the new era of 5.5G – an era where 10 gigabit interconnection is a reality. In the home broadband domain, we continued to explore and innovate, upgrading smart home services based on our 10 Gbps optical networks and restructuring bearer networks to improve user experience and unleash new business value.
- Our wireless rural network solution further simplified deployment and eliminated the need for mains power supply, base station poles, and site transmission in order to connect the unconnected. In one remote community in Brazil, for example, a network deployed with this solution brought online healthcare services and education to more than 3,000 residents, helping bridge the digital divide.
Enabling Pervasive Intelligence
- In 2024, we continued advancing our All Intelligence Strategy by pursuing a series of innovations in the AI domain. These innovations support a vast range of AI models and applications across industries and are helping accelerate intelligence to reshape and upgrade industries. The Kunpeng and Ascend ecosystems continued to grow steadily, with more than 8,500 partners and 6.65 million developers joining them to develop over 20,000 solutions. We also released CANN 8.0, our Ascend heterogeneous compute architecture, and launched our openMind application enablement kit to accelerate innovation and create thriving ecosystems.
- We launched Pangu Models 5.0, which have been fully upgraded to deliver competitive capabilities including full coverage of specifications, multiple modalities, and powerful reasoning. Pangu Models 5.0 include different sized models that can be adapted to different business scenarios and better integrate the digital and physical worlds. This helps more customers tackle the most challenging issues they face in specific industry scenarios. Pangu Models 5.0 have been used in more than 400 scenarios in over 30 industries including steel, manufacturing, and railways, helping them go intelligent while unleashing the power of digital and empowering innovation.
- In the intelligent automotive solution domain, we launched a series of solutions centered on intelligent driving. HUAWEI ADS and HarmonySpace Cockpit continued to bring more consumers a superior driving experience, and the HUAWEI Vehicle Control, HUAWEI Automotive Optics, and HUAWEI Vehicle Cloud businesses developed rapidly. Throughout the year, we shipped more than 23 million sets of intelligent automotive components. We also continued to work with more than 600 partners along the value chain to provide car OEMs with quality intelligent automotive components that offer premium experiences.
- We continued to leverage digital and intelligent technologies to help upgrade the new energy industry. In 2024, we launched the Smart String & Grid-Forming ESS Platform, which is able to effectively integrate large amounts of renewable energy into grids to significantly improve renewable energy consumption. We also used intelligent technologies to combine power generation, grids, loads, and storage, as we worked to build green, reliable, and resilient energy systems that support intelligent and green production in industries.
Delivering a Personalized Experience
- In 2024, the Consumer BG stayed consumer-centric to deliver an unparalleled intelligent experience to consumers across all scenarios, and created a high-end, fashion-forward, and technology-driven brand that appeals to consumers and has a human touch.
- We have continued innovating to deliver a compelling intelligent experience to consumers across five major scenarios: HarmonyOS Office, Fitness & Health, HarmonyOS Smart Home, HIMA-powered Smart Travel, and Entertainment.
- We officially launched HarmonyOS 5 to deliver users a high-quality experience with exquisite design, seamless interconnection, advanced intelligence, robust security, and smooth performance.
- We upgraded our HUAWEI Flagship Stores and HUAWEI Smart Life Stores around the world to provide more immersive and intelligent experiences to consumers across all scenarios. We also launched special services and organized community activities focused on accessibility to ensure everyone has equal access to technology and the digital world.
Building a Digital Platform
- Huawei Cloud is focused on reshaping industries with AI and cultivating the fertile ground needed to support industries' digital and intelligent transformation. By the end of 2024, Huawei Cloud had covered 33 geographical Regions and 96 availability zones (AZs), providing quality cloud services to customers in more than 170 countries and regions.
- Global demand for highly reliable and efficient AI computing power is growing exponentially, so Huawei Cloud launched CloudMatrix, an AI-native cloud infrastructure based on an architecture featuring system-level innovation, to provide customers with stable and reliable AI computing power. In addition, we fully upgraded our DataArts data governance pipeline and our full portfolio of database products to help enterprises simplify data use and improve model training efficiency. We also released the Mainframe-to-Cloud Solution that builds a new core system on the cloud to help enterprises like banks more agilely respond to market changes and keep pace with the intelligent era.
- Huawei Cloud remains committed to building an ecosystem that is created and fostered by all to benefit everyone in it. Our cloud is an ecosystem that aggregates industry applications, as well as a platform that empowers developers and partners around the world. By the end of 2024, Huawei Cloud had attracted more than 7.8 million developers and 45,000 partners from across the globe to jointly build an open global ecosystem that thrives on shared success.
Ecosystem Development
We advocate openness and collaboration, and are working to help others succeed. We are working with universities, developers, and partners to build ecosystems.
We continue to expand industry-education integration and research-education integration, enable scientific research and innovation at universities, and help universities cultivate outstanding talent
Together with education institutions, we have launched the Intelligent Base, an industry-academia collaboration program. We are working with top universities in China to build centers of excellence and hubs that focus on innovation in science and education. We also released the Huawei Developer Advocate Program.
We are integrating technologies such as Kunpeng, Ascend, HarmonyOS, and Huawei Cloud into classroom teaching and experiments. Our support for universities also includes collaboration on cutting-edge technologies, funding for innovation topics, and hosting professional competitions. These initiatives have had an impact on more than 6,000 teachers and benefited over 600,000 students, helping build a sustainable talent pool for ecosystem and ICT industry development.
We put developers front and center. We are working to improve the development experience and help developers grow
We have developed easy-to-use development standards, optimized toolchains, acceleration libraries, and development kits, and opened up more than 130,000 APIs.
We have also expanded our developer support team and improved mechanisms for responding to developer requirements, providing faster resolutions to issues.
We provide developers with a free Elastic Cloud Server (ESC) to help them work more efficiently. We continue to enable developers through a rich array of learning resources, activities, and competitions. In 2024, we developed more than 2,500 courses that attracted 1.16 million participants, carried out over 300 on-site activities and over 1,200 online activities, and held 12 flagship competitions.
By the end of 2024, more than 12 million developers have joined Huawei's ecosystems.
We are working to build a robust ecosystem partner enablement system to drive shared growth. We support innovation in applications and are empowering partners to better serve customers together
We continue to increase incentives for ecosystem partners through programs such as the Shining Star Program, Huawei Cloud Developer Program, Kunpeng Partner Program, and Ascend Partner Program. We have assigned several thousand experts to support partners in application development. We also provide multiple forms of support for ecosystem partners, including promotion, marketing, business opportunities, and business support, helping them to both engage with the ecosystem and benefit from it.
By the end of 2024, the ecosystems for domains like Kunpeng, Ascend, and Huawei Cloud have attracted more than 48,700 partners, developed over 41,300 innovative applications, and incubated 38 foundation models and over 160 high-performance operators. These achievements have helped accelerate the digital and intelligent transformation of industries and are providing more options for customers.
More than 20,000 HarmonyOS apps and atomic services have been released, covering 18 vertical domains and nearly all aspects of everyday life.
Cyber Security and Privacy Protection
Leveraging New Technologies to Build a Secure Digital and Intelligent World Together
In the past 30-plus years, Huawei has worked with carriers to build over 1,500 networks and helped millions of enterprises go digital. In addition, we have shipped tens of millions of sets of intelligent automotive components, and HarmonyOS is now running on over one billion devices. Whether for connectivity or devices, we have always maintained a solid track record in security. At Huawei, we believe that cyber security and privacy protection are the cornerstones of the digital and intelligent world. We strive to tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities that accompany technological transformations through managerial improvement, technological innovation, and open collaboration. We work hard to hone our competitive edge in security, take concrete steps to manage related risks, and work alongside our customers, suppliers, and partners to strengthen cyber security and privacy protection capabilities. Through these actions, we are committed to creating a better life for all in the future digital and intelligent world.
