Zhao Hailin, a telecom analyst at research firm IHS iSuppli, said: "Huawei's stand-out performance was largely because the company tightened its internal management.

"Huawei also gave up its 'pricing war' strategy to some extent, and focused on profitable contracts."

He added that Huawei had also shifted its focus to high-end, more-complex product lines, which had delivered bigger profit margins.

Huawei entered the world's top three smartphone makers for the first time in the fourth quarter of last year. It shipped 32 million smartphones in 2012, a 60 percent year-on-year increase.

Richard Yu, Huawei's consumer business group chief executive officer, earlier reiterated Huawei's plan to increase its share of the high-end smartphone market, going head-to-head with Apple Inc's iPhone handsets and Samsung Electronics Co's Galaxy series.

"Huawei is one of a very few Chinese companies that compete globally on their own innovation," said Xiang Ligang, the president of telecom industry portal, cctime.com.

In 2012, Huawei invested 30.09 billion yuan, or 13.7 percent of total sales revenue, on research and development.

The company has now established 16 R&D centers and 28 joint innovation centers around the world.

China remained Huawei's biggest single country market in 2012, where sales increased by 12 percent year-on-year to 73 billion yuan.