As the pioneer of China's telecommunications manufacturing industry and the largest listed company in China's telecommunications manufacturing industry, ZTE Corporation has become an important force in the international telecommunications industry. At present, ZTE Corporation has set up 96 agencies worldwide, promoting its business to more than 130 countries. Over 65 percent of ZTE's 8000 overseas employees are local citizens. The operating strategy of globalization and quality service helped ZTE obtain success in overseas market.

According to statistics, the income of ZTE from overseas market in 2007 increased 94.8 percent year on year, reaching RMB20.091 billion yuan, the ratio of which in the total income increased to 57.77 percent, while in 2004, the income from international businesses in total income of ZTE accounted for only 23 percent. In the first quarter of 2008, the income of ZTE from overseas market reached RMB5.58 billion yuan, 54.6 percent higher year on year. The overseas income has become a main drive of income growth, and its ratio in sales income grew from 60 percent of the same period of last year to 64.5 percent.

In the first several months of 2008, ZTE gained victories in succession in overseas market: In May, ZTE won the IPTV equipment order from RUE, the state-owned telecommunications operator of the Republic of Belarus; In April, ZTE signed a globally operational frame agreement on system equipment with the famous British carrier Vodafone; In February, ZTE signed a one-year-long HSDPA Modem providing contract with Hutchison-Whampoa 3G, providing HSDPA terminals for several subsidiary companies of Hutchison-Whampoa in Europe??From 1998 when ZTE got its first overseas order till now, through over 10 years of hard working, overseas market has become a barn of ZTE, and it is entering the harvest season.

The firm overseas market strategy is crucial for the development of ZTE. In 2002, ZTE definitely set the internationalization strategy as the mainstay of the corporate development from then on. Establishing the reaction capability in the overseas market is an important strategic adjustment of ZTE overseas strategy. In 2005, ZTE set up 12 regions globally. As to this move, Sun Tao, Vice-Minister of Sales Management Dept. of ZTE, stated, "We establishing the reaction capability in the overseas market, extend the such decision function toward overseas as commercial and technological negotiation, logistics & transfer, project outsourcing, auxiliary raw material purchase, after service, and other related decision to the front line. These will be all transferred to the regional platform in line with the authorization rules, and we don't need to apply for the headquarters on everything." It is the necessary choice for an international enterprise to shorten the decision flow of overseas market.

ZTE Corporation now has about 50,000 employees, including 8,000 focusing on international marketing, accounting for 50 percent of the marketing staff of the whole company. We can see the resolve and layout of ZTE Corporation to cultivate intensively the overseas market.

To strengthen R&D is another key factor for ZTE to develop constantly and obtain steady success in overseas market. As learn, ZTE's R&D cost takes up around 10 percent of its operating revenue. Meanwhile, ZTE extends its R&D layout to the whole world. Presently ZTE has 16 R&D centers, including 3 in the US, and some in France, Sweden, India, Pakistan, etc.

Nowadays, ZTE Corporation provides quality products and service with high performance price ratio for 500-odd carriers in 135 countries worldwide. As it enters European and American market with independent innovation, it brought the joy of modern telecommunications services to African market, and shortened the "time gap" between developing countries in Africa and the international communications development level.

In only five months, ZTE Corporation extends the capacity of Ethiopian GSM network to 2 million threads from hundreds of thousands of threads, and the price of a SIM card in local market decreased from US$50 to several dollars. Ethiopian people can thus have more opportunities to enjoy modern telecommunications service. In Libya, local operators expanded their networks with ZTE's equipments. People there have never thought that the price of a SIM card would decrease to 5 dinars from 950 dinars within five years.

When ZTE's equipment enters overseas market in large amount, there are more and more demands for equipment maintenance and technological usage. In order to facilitate its overseas clients and set up a long-term operational win-win system, ZTE opened technology-training institute in overseas market. A person in charge of ZTE gave an example: A European engineer providing equipment maintenance service for a Libyan operating room has a pay of US$100 per hour. Many developed countries not only wish maintain the high product price through monopoly, but also maintain a high price in terms of training, technological export and services. Since ZTE established its training institute in North Africa on January 28, 2007, professional technology training over 500 person-times was accomplished that year, and more than 3500 persons have been trained everyday. In Ethiopia, the communications institute jointly set up by ZTE and Ethiopian Telecommunications plans to train 1000 engineers at the first phase, and train over 3000 engineers in total, which will reduce greatly the usage cost of ZTE's equipments. The technology export of ZTE Corporation trained many local technological talents with low cost and set up a consistent win-win system, and got many praises from local clients. Presently, ZTE Corporation assigned special region training managers to all the 12 regions in its overseas market, and set up overseas training centers in Russia, France, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, etc. Till 2007, ZTE Corporation has provided training service for nearly 130 thousand clients in over 70 countries worldwide. From simple "product export" to "skill export", ZTE Corporation impelled the effective operation and sustainable development of local networks, and built up a longer co-operational relationship with overseas clients.

 
 
 Source:CE.cn