ZTE

ZTE

ZTE Corporation (formerly Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation) is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company headquartered in Shenzhen, China. ZTE operates in three business units - Carrier Networks(54%)-Terminals(29%)-

Telecommunication(17%). ZTE's core products are wireless, exchange, access, optical transmission, and data telecommunications gear; mobile phones; and telecommunications software. It also offers products that provide value-added services, such as video on demand and streaming media. ZTE primarily sells products under its own name but it is also an OEM. ZTE is one of the top five largest smartphone manufacturers in its home market, and in the top ten, worldwide.

ZTE, initially founded as Zhongxing Semiconductor Co., Ltd in Shenzhen, China, in 1985, was incorporated by a group of investors associated with China's Ministry of Aerospace. While the company initially profited from domestic sales, it vowed to use money from its 2004 Hong Kong IPO to further expand R&D, overseas sales to developed nations, and overseas production. Making headway in the international telecom market in 2006, it took 40% of new global orders for CDMA networks topping the world CDMA equipment market by number of shipments. In 2009, the company had become the worldwide third-largest vendor of GSM telecom equipment, and about 20% of all GSM gear sold throughout the world that year was ZTE branded. As of 2011 it holds around 7% of the key 3GPP Long Term Evolution patents and that same year launched the world's first smartphone with dual GPS/GLONASS navigation, MTS 945.

As of 2012, ZTE is the 4th largest mobile phone vendor. It also placed within IDC's Top 5 smartphone vendor leaderboard. Strategy Analytics counts ZTE as 4th largest smartphone vendor (5% market share) in 2Q2013. It also manufactures tablets. At Mobile World Congress 2014 in Spain, Microsoft announced that ZTE is the latest hardware partner of Windows Phone platform.