Zhongxing Telecom Pakistan (Pvt.) Ltd.
ZTE, like many large Chinese companies, has its roots in the state having been created in 1985 by a group of state-owned enterprises associated with China's Ministry of Aerospace.[9] Ties to the state notwithstanding, the corporation is publicly traded having made an initial public offering (IPO) on the Shenzhen stock exchange in 1997 and another on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December, 2004.[9]
The company initially profited from domestic sales.[2]
It vowed to use money from its 2004 Hong Kong IPO to further expand R&D, overseas sales to developed nations and overseas production,[9] and it made headway in the international telecom market in 2006. It took 40% of new global orders for CDMA networks[10] topping the world CDMA equipment market by number of shipments.[11] That same year also saw ZTE find a customer in the Canadian Telus[5] and membership in the Wi-Fi Alliance.[12] More customers in developed nations soon followed Telus' lead, and in 2007 ZTE had sold to UK's Vodafone, Spain's Telefonica and the Australian Telstra,[5] as well as garnering the greatest number of CDMA contracts, globally.[13]
By 2008 ZTE would be able to claim its customer base was truly global, as it had made sales in 140 countries.[5]
In 2009 the company had become the worldwide third-largest vendor of GSM telecom equipment, and ZTE sales accounted for about twenty percent of all GSM gear sold throughout the world that year.[14]
As of 2011 it does hold 3GPP Long Term Evolution patents.[15]
Customers
A good number of ZTE's customers are outside of China. While the majorities are developing country mobile network operators, ZTE products also see use in developed countries as well. The UK's Vodafone, Canadian Telus, and France Telecom have all purchased equipment from ZTE.
