Huawei has reported a 32% increase in revenue for 2016, but profit grew just 0.4% as the company invested heavily in R&D.
Group annual revenue for the year was 521.6 billion yuan ($75.7 billion), while net profit reached 37.1 billion yuan.
Carrier business group revenues grew 24% to 290.6 billion yuan, as the operator focused on digital transformation as well as exploring opportunities in emerging categories including cloud and the IoT.
Enterprise revenues meanwhile grew 47% to $5.9 billion yuan. Consumer revenues likewise increased 44% to 179.8 billion yuan due to strong smartphone shipments of 139 million.
But the company’s 76.4 billion yuan in R&D spending muted profit growth for the year. Huawei rotating CEO Eric Xu said the spending marked an investment in future growth.
“As humanity continues to explore and make new breakthroughs in the digital world, digitization and increasing intelligence present huge business opportunities for all industries, and are also paving the road for new growth for the ICT industry,” he said.
“We will stay customer-centric and will support digital transformation in all industries, in order to create value for our customers and to grow sustainably.”