The news comes after a rough March for the Chinese networking vendor, where it was banned from a major project in Australia and saw its alliance with Symantec end.
Networking
vendor Huawei Technologies finally got some good news, with market research
firm ABI Research saying the Chinese company grabbed second place in the global
wireless equipment market in the fourth quarter of 2011.
ABI analysts
said April 3 that Huawei generated $2.53 billion in revenues during the
quarter, a 38 percent increase over the same period in 2010. That was enough to
edge into second place, moving past Nokia Siemens Networks, which generated
$2.4 billion in wireless equipment sales during the quarter.
Ericsson
remained at the top of the list, with about $3.5 billion in sales, according to
ABI.
The fourth
quarter was the strongest for the market overall in 2011, according to ABI
analysts. Still, it was not as strong a fourth quarter as in previous years, as
customers continued to deal with the volatile economic environment, said Jim
Eller, principal analyst of wireless infrastructure at ABI.
In general,
fourth quarter 2011 revenues were down year-on-year from fourth quarter 2010,
Eller said in a statement. Wireless network operators did not spend as much in
the fourth quarter as they have in past years, presumably taking a cautious
approach due to the uncertainty of the macroeconomic situation.
Despite the
overall market numbers, Huawei executives had to have been happy to see how
their company did, particularly in light of how things have gone over the past
few weeks.
In March, it
was learned that the Australian government had banned Huawei from bidding on a
$38 billion fiber-optic network in that country. While government officials had
not said why the networking company was banned, media sources in that country
said the decision came after Australian intelligence officials had brought up
concerns about recent computer hacking attacks that had allegedly been tied to
China.
Similar,
security concerns reportedly prompted security software vendor Symantec to end
its four-year alliance with Huawei that was created to develop network security
solutions. Symantec officials announced in November 2011
that they were looking to sell their 49 percent stake in Huawei Symantec
Technologies, and on March 30 announced that they had completed the sale of
that stake to Huawei for $530 million.
In an
announcement about the completion of the sale, Symantec officials said that
after negotiations with Huawei, it was determined that the best course for the
business was to go forward with a single owner, rather than both.
However, in a
March 28 article, The New York Times reported that Symantec officials were worried
that Huaweis strong relationship with the Chinese government would make it
difficult for Symantec to get classified information from the U.S. government
regarding cyber-security threats.
In January,
the U.S. government expanded who could receive classified information from the
National Security Agency regarding security threats. Before, the plan was to
share the intelligence with military contractors. However, now such information
also will be shared with antivirus vendorssuch as Symantecand network
providers, according to the story.
Quoting two
unnamed people briefed on the Symantec-Huawei deal, Symantec officials worried
that their alliance with Huawei would preclude them from getting access to the
classified information.
Also according
to unnamed sources, Huawei plans to shut down its offices in Silicon Valley and
move the entire operation out of the United States, due in large part to the
oversight it was getting from the U.S. government.
Email
Print
