Chinese equipment maker ‘not satisfied’ with generating 9% of its Middle East revenues from enterprise.
Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies Co. aims to grow revenues from its enterprise division in the Middle East, which sells IT services and hardware, by 50% each year to reach $1.5 billion by 2017, according to a senior executive.
The company’s enterprise division, which provides IT telecoms support, cloud computing, data storage, servers and security, will eventually make up at least 30% of the total revenues of the company in the Middle East region, from 9% today, Dong Wu, vice president of Huawei’s enterprise division in the Middle East, told Zawya Dow Jones on Thursday.
“We are not satisfied with this 9%,” said Mr Wu.”The long-term view is by 2017 it will reach at least 30% of our total business in Middle East. That will mean the enterprise business will become the major driving force for our growth in the Middle East.”
Enterprise and IT solutions have become a hot topic for telecoms and technology companies across the Middle East, and Dell, Hewlett Packard and Dubai-based Du are all focusing on winning business in the sector.
Huawei, which has grown over the last decade to become the world’s second-largest provider of telecom equipment after Sweden’s Ericsson, offers enterprise services to every business sector, but is targeting winning big infrastructure and government-led projects across the region, Mr Wu said.
It recently won the contract to supply IT solutions to the Etihad Rail project. Globally, the enterprise division makes up less than 9% of Huawei’s total revenues, Mr Wu said. The privately-owned company posted $1.85 billion in net profit on revenues of $32 billion in 2011.
Huawei currently employs 3,500 people across the GCC, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, with 300 employees in the enterprise division, Mr Wu added.