While its fierce competitors, Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) witnessed a challenging year 2009 which saw revenues and profits take a severe hit, Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies has a completely different story to portray.

The company today released its audited financial performance for the year 2009 posting revenues of $ 21.8 billion with net profit of $ 2.7 billion. The net profit margin was at 12.2%. The privately held company said that the results are audited by KPMG.

The revenues are at a 19% rise on a yearly comparison. 

The figures are remarkable considering that vendors Ericsson and NSN saw a miserable year. Ericsson recorded revenues of $ 28.7 billion at 1% drop but the net declined by 65% to 570 million. The company announced 1,500 job cuts in addition to the 5,000 announced earlier.

NSN’s 2009 revenues were at euro 12.57 billion at a yearly drop of 18% while net profit was at euro 1.67 billion.

Last year operators across the globe had reduced their capex and hence Huawei’s revenue rise is certainly more noteworthy.

“Operators are looking to Huawei because of our unique value proposition of rapidly delivering robust solutions that address the business challenges of our customers through innovation. Our solutions improve network quality, reduce network maintenance expenditure and protect our customer’s return on investments by ‘future-proofing’ their networks,” said Ken Hu, Chief Marketing Officer, Huawei.  “It is why Huawei is now a partner-of choice for 45 of the world’s top 50 operators – up from 36 in 2008.”

“We see our business momentum continuing in 2010 and expect year-on-year revenue growth of 20% driven by increased deployments of mobile and fixed broadband networks, further take-up of customized smart devices, and higher demand for professional managed services,” he added.

Expenses for the company declined by 1.4% on a yearly comparison. The company said that it expects the efficiency to be enhanced further by its adoption of transformation programs such as “Integrated Financial Services” with IBM and “Lead to Cash” with Accenture.