ZTE Corporation – One of the Largest Smartphone Manufacturing and Telecommunication Company.

ZTE Corporation is a Chinese telecommunication company, with its headquarters located in South Shenzhen, Guangdong. It is a 36 years old company, which is partially owned by the Chinese government. The company is counted among one of the leading telecom companies in China and is actively working overseas to expand its boundaries.

Hou Weigui founded ZTE Corporation in 1985 as Zhongxing Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Today the company is known as the biggest manufactures of mobile phones, smartphones, tablets, computer hardware, etc. It is also a leading software service provider to global telecommunications service companies and enterprises. The company is operating worldwide, and over 68000 people are working for it. As of 2019, the company made revenues worth  CN¥90.740 billion/S $13.2 billion, and it owned assets worth CN¥141.202 billion. ZTE trades on the Shenzhen and Hong Kong stock exchanges.

The Founding of ZTE Corporation

A group of investors, including Hou Weigui, from the Ministry of Aerospace Industry of the People’s Republic of China, started Corporation ZTE as Zhongxing Semiconductor Co., Ltd in 1985. The company name was changed to Zhongxing New Telecommunications Equipment Co. Ltd when it also started to build telecom equipment and had some of its shares owned by the government. ZTE had its first IPO  on the Shenzhen stock exchange in 1997.

Till 2004, ZTE was running within the country, but in December 2004, it stepped out of the state and traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. In 2006, the company shipped 40% of its telecom equipment overseas, leading to a further international expansion. Canadian state telecommunications company Telus, UK’s Vodafone, Spain’s Telefónica, and the Australian Telstra are few of the first international customers of ZTE. With its new customers, the company also entered into a Wi-Fi Alliance in the same year. By 2008, the company had engaged with customers in 140 countries for its CDMA equipment.

In 2009, ZTE was the third-largest GSM telecom equipment seller in the world. The company is also credited to manufacture the world’s first smartphone with dual GPS/GLONASS navigation. The smartphone was called MTS 945. As of 2011, the company held 7% of the major LTE patents. As of 2012 and 2013, ZTE was the fourth-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. In 2014, the company partnered with Microsoft to launch Windows smartphones in Spain.

ZTE along with having multiple manufacturing units has its 13 R&D centers located in various countries, including the USA, Sweden, and Korea. The company carries out the R&D work in partnership with companies like IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Qualcomm.

Products and Services

ZTE is one of the largest smartphone manufacturers (4th largest as of 2012 and 2013). The company also manufactures Tablets and computer hardware. Recently it launched a two-screen smartphone named Axon M, which could run two applications separately on both screens at the same time. Apart from smartphones, the company also develop Hotspot equipment, network operator equipment, network nodes, and network elements, etc. GGSN, PGW, PDSN, ZTE ZXR10-Series, MPLS, and legacy WAP are some of the core routing and core networking equipment made by ZTE. ZTE is also active as a software as well as a telecommunications service provider in China and other countries.

ZTE Corporation Subsidiaries

ZTE is operational in countries like the US, India, Korea, Spain, Germany, Australia, Singapore, etc. The company has not only opened offices in those countries, but it has also made some acquisitions and held subsidiaries there. ZTESoft, Nubia Technology, Zonergy, Netaş Telekomünikasyon A.Ş are the names of some of its international subsidiaries.

The Chairman at ZTE Corporation

Yin Yimin is the Chairman at ZTE, who replaced Zhao Xianming in 2017. Before becoming the Chairman of ZTE, Yimin was serving the company as the President. Yimin has been with ZTE for the past 30 years. He joined the company in 1991, and since then, he has been appointed to different prime positions in ZTE. He has worked as an executive director for the company for 20 years. He was also the leader of ZTE Corporation for its product development and marketing between 2004 and 2010. He is also responsible for setting up the Shenzhen ZTE Venture Capital Fund Management Co., Ltd in 2010.