In addition to continuing to make efforts to maintain its leadership in the global smartphone market, Huawei is also to excert all-out efforts to develop its chipset business in the 2019, according to industry sources.

Huawei managed to outrace Apple to become the world's second largest smartphone vendors in 2018 with shipments totaling over 200 million units.

Looking into 2019, Huawei aims to maintain its lead against Apple, targeting to ship 250-260 million units in the year, buoyed by shipments of its high-end P- and Mate-series models and the entry-level and mid-tier Honor sub-brand models.

Huawei has also been making significant progress with respect to the development of its chipset business, the sources indicated.

Having already accounted for over 50% of the chipset solution market for 4K TVs in China, Huawei unveiled its chipset solutions for 8K TVs at CES 2019 to cash in on the rising popularity of 8K TVs.

Huawei's 8K TV solutions have been adopted by not only China's TV brands but also Japan-based Sharp, weighing on the market potential of comparable solutions from Taiwan-based MediaTek, the sources commented.

In fact, Huawei has been adopting a multiple approach to developing its chipset business. In addition to rolling out its Kirin-series mobile solutions from its subsidiary HiSilicon Technologies, the company has launched its Ascend series AI chips and Arm-based Kunpeng series server CPUs, in addition to TV chips.

Huawei has been spending heavily on purchasing semiconductor products, according to data compiled by Gartner.

Huawei saw its purchases of semiconductor chips increase 45% on year to over US$21 billion in 2018, making it the third largest buyer of IC chips globally in the year, trailing Samsung Electronics and Apple but ahead of Dell, the data showed.