Telecom Equipment News
- ZTE eyes 10% of Taiwan mobile market
Date: 7-Jun-2007 Sources: (Shenzhen Daily)
ZTE Corp., the mainland's No. 2 telecom gear maker, said yesterday it hopes to grab 10 percent of Taiwan's mobile market and boost its local headcount fivefold as part of its rapid expansion on the island.
ZTE is aiming to meet that market share target within a year, building on its 2.5 percent market share now, Aaron Yao said on the sidelines of Computex, the world's second-largest computer show.
He said ZTE's Taiwan representative office, which opened early last year, hoped to boost its headcount to at least 100 people in two to three years, from around 20 now.
Relatively few mainland companies operate in Taiwan. But Shenzhen-based ZTE, which established its Taiwan office through its Hong Kong subsidiary, is jockeying in the market with cross-town rival Huawei Technologies, as the pair try to expand beyond their home market in search of growth.
'Huawei came in a lot earlier than us, so we're playing catch-up. We have to move quickly,'said Yao.
ZTE and Huawei came to prominence as China's telecom carriers spent billions of dollars on networks from the 1990s, and the gear makers charged lower prices to compete with Ericsson, Motorola Inc. and Nortel among others.
Banking on their lower prices, they have expanded aggressively into developing markets such as the Middle East, India, Africa and Eastern Europe.
But they have had less success in more lucrative, developed markets such as the United States and Western Europe, where competition is stiffer.
Yao said ZTE sees Taiwan as one of those more developed markets where it hopes to do more business going forward.
'One challenge for us is some people don't like to buy mainland phones,'he said, adding that brands like Nokia and Motorola don't face such challenges in Taiwan.
ZTE expects more than half of its revenue to come from overseas in a year or two, up from about 40 percent last year.
ZTE in April posted a 33 percent drop in second-half earnings, amid lackluster spending by telecom operators.
ZTE earned a net profit of 420 million yuan (US$54.4 million) in the six months ended Dec. 31, compared with 629.64 million yuan a year earlier.
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