Huawei smartphone sales jump 39% in first half of the year

Huawei is pushing into the top-end segment of the smartphone market

Chinese tech giant Huawei on Wednesday said its global smartphone sales jumped by 39% in the first half of the year.

It comes after the world's fourth-biggest smartphone maker posted a 30% growth in overall revenue on Monday.

Huawei said it shipped 48.2 million devices globally in the first half of 2015, giving them a 87% surge in handset sales revenues

The company is competing with Apple and Xiaomi for the top spot in China, the world's biggest handset market.

The boost in sales figures comes after the firm said it would shed its low-cost appeal and include high-margin premium models to challenge Samsung and Apple at the top-end of the market.

Huawei said that shipments for the mid-to-high-end category recorded a year-on-year increase of 70%.

Defying the slowdown

Regarding sales in China, the firm managed to defy a slowdown hitting its rivals Samsung and Xiaomi.

Overall smartphone shipments in China in the first quarter of 2015 shrank for the first time in six years, with one-time leader Xiaomi saying the domestic market was nearing saturation.

On Monday, Huawei released its earnings results for the first six months of the year, posting a 30% increase in revenue to 175.9bn yuan ($28.3bn; £18.2bn) and giving a positive outlook for further growth in 2015.

Aside from smartphones, the Shenzhen-based firm is one of the world's largest telecommunications companies, competing with the likes of Sweden's Ericsson on infrastructure such as mobile phone masts.