ZTE Corporation of China has confirmed its intrusion into the market share of the traditional GSM vendors by claiming its GSM equipment hastopped 35 million lines worldwide — with systems deployed in more than 20 countries
Much of ZTE’s growth has come outside of Europe, as you might expect, although the company does have deals with multinational cariers such as Telefonica andPortuguese Telecom.
Ye Weiming, Vice President and General Manager, ZTE’s Mobile Division said the company’s R&D was attributable for much of theh company’s success.
“We’re paying much attention to next-generation technology. For example, we established an R&D centre in Sweden that is engaged in 3G technology and we have set up over 10 field trials and pilots to convince operators of the advantage of our WCDMA products.”
Rivals have often stated that the large develeopment activities of ZTE and Huawei are affordable because of cheaper labour, meaning the end product is also cheaper in the market. But Ye Weiming said that it wasn’t just price that was bringing reward for the Chinese company.
“I believe that ZTE can hold its own because our products have reached a level to compete with them in terms of quality and services, and we can offer local operations with total solutions.”
ZTE can provide a range of GSM, CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) and PHS (Personal Handset System) products to operators.
In 2003, ZTE launched its BTS (Base Transceiver System) and won large-scale application in the world,. ZTE’s self-developed GSM version that supports migration from 2G to 3G has won excellent achievements in MTNET (Digital Mobile Communication Simulation Testing Network) tests organized by the Chinese MII (Ministry of Information Industry). Having completed its GSM solutions for 850M, 900M, 1800M, 1900M and EGSM (Extended Global System for Mobile Communications),
ZTE is also developing Edge, half rate and AMR (adaptive multi-rate) products, which support a migration from GSM, GPRS and EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution) to WCDMA.