Huawei, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, had a record-breaking year. They sold 200 million units of their smartphones, which set a new record for the company. This broke its previous record of 153 million phones in 2017.

Huawei beat its record purely and simply because of how many smartphones it released this year. Huawei managed to manufacture smartphones appealing to users of all age and all budgets. The company’s risky strategy ultimately paid off.

Huawei not only released many phones this year, but it also put out some great hits. Huawei’s P20 and Mate 20 series proved to be the real breadwinners. They helped the company sell shipments of 16 million and 5 million devices, respectively.

Huawei’s Nova series was also a big hit among fans of the Chinese phone company. The Nova 4, which was recently launched, became a mid-range series fan favorite. The mid-range series sold more than a whopping 65 million units since the series made its debut in 2016.

Then there is the popular low budget phone, the Honor series. Huawei did not give out a specific figure regarding the sales of Honors, company but the did say the series achieved “outstanding performance,” specifically the Honor 10 and Honor View 10 (the View 20 was a bit of a bust).

This success is especially so impressive partly because Huawei is completely banned in the US. Clearly, Huawei doesn’t need the American market as much as some people might have thought.

Huawei has had a turbulent relationship with the US recently. The US DOJ recently arrested Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou over bank fraud allegations. So the relationship won’t be improving anytime soon.

But the company has become exceedingly popular in recent months, not just in its own homeland of China, but abroad as well.

While it was the Canadians that arrested Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US, Canada itself hasn’t imposed any bans on Huawei products. People can buy a Mate 20 Pro or P20 Pro from any major network carrier in Canada. 

While 2018 was a massively successful year for the company, it now needs to focus on long-term goals. Huawei needs to keep this momentum going into next year and work hard on its public image, especially in the West.

It is already a pretty popular brand in Asia, especially in its homeland of China. If it can market the products well and form some sort of alliance with the US, it might even topple Samsung and come into direct competition with Apple.