China's telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. reported a global sales of 33 billion yuan (about US$4 billion) for the first half year with a year-on-year rise of 85 percent, US$2.47 billion or 62 percent of which are from overseas market.

This is the first time that the company's overseas sales exceeded its domestic sales, said sources with Huawei.

In the first half year, the company's sales of mobile products rose 120 percent and its CDMA products saw a rise of 200 percent in the international market, Huawei said.

The company has gained 5 percent of patent in WCDMA, European technology standard for the third generation mobile communications (3G), ranking the top five in the world.

As one of China's earliest developers in 3G technology, Huawei has spent around 700 million US dollars on 3G with 6,000 research fellows.

The company announced Sunday it started to construct the first 3G network in Latin America in Uruguay based on WCDMA. It has won 11 contracts on construction of commercial networks based on WCDMA overseas.

Huawei's CDMA products sold in the first half year could serve 10 million users and the company's CDMA solutions have entered countries including the United States, Thailand, Mexico, Pakistan and Algeria.

Huawei's equipment products supporting fixed line operation have newly entered 27 countries in the first half year. The company provides equipment products for 97 countries and regions including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Russia.

Huawei-made handsets have entered Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Sweden and Slovenia.

From the first half year's performance, Huawei is expected to have annual sales higher than its goal and the annual overseas sales would exceed 50 percent of its global sales, said the company.

(Xinhua News Agency July 26, 2005)