Chinese ZTE to be a Global Top-5 Handset Vendor

Chinese ZTE to be a Global Top-5 Handset Vendor. According to sources at the Taiwan handset industry, The telecom equipment giant, Chinese ZTE, aims to become one of the top-five handset vendors in the global market within five years.

Top five handset makers are Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and LG. In order to reach its goal, the Chinese company will have to overtake market share from some of the existing phone vendors.

Last year, ZTE shipped about 30 million handsets and according to Gartner, accounted for 1.2% of the global market in Q4 2007. However, ZTE projected handset sales will account for 50% of its total revenues by 2012, compared to 20% in 2006 and 25% in 2007.

Although there are market rumors stating that ZTE is likely to acquire the handset unit of Motorola, sources in Taiwan said that the possibility of a ZTE-Motorola deal is low due to issues concerning politics and the complementarity of the companies' resources.