Huawei has released its 2025 audited financial results, with total revenue of CNY 880.9bn ($127.6bn), which is a 2.2% YoY increase. The report highlights a significant expansion in profitability, with operating profit surging 22.1% to CNY 96.9bn ($14bn). That translated to an operating profit margin of 11%, up 180 bps from the 9.2% recorded in 2024. 

Huawei continues to maintain one of the industry’s highest reinvestment rates, allocating CNY 192.3bn ($27.9bn) to R&D—a massive 21.8% of annual revenue.

Huawei’s R&D expenditure rose 7% last year to an impressive RMB 192.3 billion (approximately $28 billion), representing nearly 22% of annual revenue.

In contrast, Ericsson—whose portfolio remains heavily centered on 5G—reduced its R&D outlay  by 9% to SEK 48.9 billion (about $5.2 billion).

At 21% of sales, Ericsson’s R&D intensity was largely in line with Huawei’s. Nokia, meanwhile, outpaced both rivals in relative terms, allocating 23% of revenue—roughly €4.6 billion ($5.3 billion)—to R&D, up 7% year over year. Most of that increase stemmed from the February 2025 acquisition of optical systems vendor Infinera, which expanded Nokia’s technology base and R&D footprint.

The sharper divergence lies in workforce trends. As reported by Light Reading, Ericsson and Nokia have collectively shed nearly 28,000 positions since 2022, equivalent to about 15% of their combined headcount that year. While growing automation and AI integration have arguably improved operational efficiency, the scale of these reductions also reflects a cooling investment climate among operators. With telco spending on 5G deployments tapering off, Europe’s two large network equipment vendors are continuing layoffs.

In contrast, Huawei’s workforce has continued to increase as it has pushed into new industrial sectors. Since 2021, when Huawei suffered its worst-ever sales decline, the Chinese behemoth has added about 18,000 employees to its payroll, according to annual reports. Around 5,000 of them were recruited last year, including 1,000 in R&D alone. That resulted in 213,000 employees Huawei employees in 2025.

The increased hiring boosted overall operating costs, including R&D expenditure, by 7.2%, to about RMB334 billion ($48.5 billion).

Source & Graph Credit: Light Reading

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Moving forward, China’s largest IT vendor’s roadmap prioritizes: