ZTE plans manufacturing unit in India

SHENZEN, CHINA: China-based ZTE Corp. is set to establish a manufacturing plant in India, its second biggest market after China.

The company is in talks with various State governments to set up its base in India.

Disclosing this to the media, He Shiyou, president, Handset division and senior vice president of ZTE said the company plans to produce 30 million handsets this year and it hopes to ship over 10 million of these to India.

In 2006, the company produced about 15 million handsets and shipped about 6 million of it to India. “Our Gurgaon facility, which under takes repair and maintenance facility is already undertaking handset assembly on a limited scale, looking at the market conditions we might put up our manufacturing unit in India.”

At the same time, the company is planning to look at India for its low-end cell phones.

“We are offering our handsets to Reliance and Spice. We plan to continue shipping low-end phones to India. However depending upon the market conditions we might start shipping high-end phones,” said Shiyou.

Meanwhile the company is in talks with several Indian operators to sell its IPTV solutions in India.

Sharing this information, ZTE’s-vice president for IPTV product line Wu Ziliang said that the company is in talks with BSNL.

ZTE is also scouting for partners in India to undertake research and development in broadband and Internet protocol TV (IPTV) products and is already in an advanced stage of discussion with a private Indian telecom equipment maker.

Without giving much information, Xu Ming, president, Broadband products said, “We are in discussion with an Indian telecom equipment manufacturer to develop ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line is a form of DSL, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone line) products and to undertake R&D.”

The company has shipped over three million lines of ADSL equipment to India including two million for BSNL’s rural network, last year and expects to double this in 2007.

“We have over 7.9 per cent market share globally in ADSL equipment market and we expect to reach 14 per cent market share in 2007,” said Ming.

The company has posted revenue of $550 million in 2006 from the worldwide sale of its ADSL equipment and has set a target of $700 million in 2007.

(ZTE hosted the correspondent in China)