Huawei's profits jump 19% as the Chinese telecoms giant continues expansion

Firm faces continued suspicion in US and UK over links to Chinese intelligence

Chinese telecom and smartphone manufacturer Huawei has reported revenue rising 19 per cent in the first half of the year with sales jumping to 135.8bn yuan (£12.8bn or $21.9bn).

The firm has previously concentrated on making network equipment but has recently benefited from moving into new markets including software and smartphones.

In the UK its Ascend P7 smartphone sells for £330 SIM-free and earlier this year it even launched its own fitness tracker.

Huawei is currently the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer and shipped 13.7 million devices in the first quarter of the year according to analyst firm IDC.

However, this still puts it firmly behind both Samsung (85 million) and Apple (43.7m) over the same period and only marginally ahead of rivals Lenovo (12.9m) and LG (12.3m).

Its growth in the telcoms market comes despite being virtually locked out of the US market, with American politicians claiming in 2012 that the company posed a security risk because of alleged links to the Chinese military and government.

Much of this speculation is due to the fact that Huawei’s founder, Ren Zhengfei , was previously an officer in the People's Liberation Army. Zhengfei has vigorously denied these accusations, pointing out that Huawei is 100 per cent owned by its staff - not by the state.

A UK parliamentary report last year found that Huawei had been allowed to embed itself in the British telecoms system without proper security checks, although the company's protestations of innocence were vindicated by claims published last year that the NSA had compromised Huawei's internal servers.