GLOBAL NETWORKER: China's Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., one of the world leaders in telecom equipment and technology, shows its latest products at the China International Telecom Expo in September 2009 (CFP)

While the global telecommunications industry continues to reel from the worldwide recession, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., China's top telecom equipment manufacturer, is staging a swift and defiant surge.

The Shenzhen-based company announced on January 4, 2010 it had raked in more than $30 billion in sales in 2009, representing a robust increase of 28.8 percent year on year.

The private company did not disclose financial details about its specific businesses, but Ren Zhengfei, founder and president of the company, said its sales of both optical network equipment and professional services soared more than 30 percent year on year.

"We are on track to reach the target of $36 billion in total sales in 2010," said Ren.

Huawei is now one of China's fastest rising telecom providers. Throughout 2009, the company clinched a number of big telecom orders in China, where major mobile operators set out on a spending spree to establish third-generation networks. The surge helped domestic markets account for 53.5 percent of Huawei's total revenues, up from 25 percent in 2008.

Meanwhile, its combination of low prices, aggressive marketing and product quality have made it a welcome presence in overseas markets. According to data from the U.S. market research company Dell'Oro, Huawei's global market share almost doubled to 20 percent by the end of September 2009 from a year earlier, making the company the second largest telecom equipment supplier after Ericsson.

The turbo-charged growth comes as telecom-related orders around the world dry up. The economic downturn has forced telecom carriers to cut back on expenses, leaving equipment makers in the doldrums. Canada's Nortel Network Corp., one of the world's largest telecom equipment makers, filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States and Canada in January 2009, and other major vendors, such as Alcatel-Lucent S.A. and Cisco Systems Inc., are enjoying slower growth, if even that.

But analysts believe the downturn provided a powerful catalyst for Huawei to rival the established foreign vendors in their own backyards.

As telecom carriers become more price conscious, Huawei has made gains to win a larger piece of the shrinking global telecom pie, Zhang Yu, a senior analyst with the Beijing-based consulting firm BDA China Ltd. (BDA), told Beijing Review.

The mergers between Alcatel and Lucent and the joint venture between Nokia and Siemens gave Huawei sales opportunities it wouldn't have been presented had there been more competitors in the market, he said.

Even in the United States, a market it has previously had trouble entering, Huawei is laying a solid foundation for future expansion. In August 2009, the U.S. wireless carrier Clearwire added Huawei to its supplier list of base stations and other key infrastructure parts under a three-year contract. This exemplifies how Huawei is moving beyond China and other emerging markets to tap into established markets in Europe and North America.