China-based ZTE, the world’s sixth largest mobile handset manufacturer, will be entering the mobile handsets retail market in India in October. It is eyeing at garnering 20% of its global revenues from the Indian market in the coming years.

At present, the company’s handsets are not retailed on a stand-alone basis; they come bundled with connections from CDMA players Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices and GSM player Vodafone Essar.

“Last year, we shipped 7-8 million handsets to India. This year, we are planning to touch 10 million,” ZTE India chairman and managing director, D K Ghosh said.

“India is the next growth story for us”, said Ghosh, pointing out that currently China is the largest mobile handset market for ZTE but in the next five to seven years the company expects India to surpass China in terms of its mobile handsets market.

China currently has a tele-density of 75% while India’s is slightly lower than 30%. “Our mobile handsets will range ultra-low-cost ones which will be available for as low as $20-$25 (Rs 1,000) to high-end varities,” he said.

The company had reaped $700 million in revenues for handsets as well as telecom equipments from the Indian market in the year-ending 2007. Its global revenues for the period were $7 billion. ZTE has bid for state-run BSNL’s GSM equipments for 93 million lines.Till date, it has sold 100 million handsets globally. 10 million out of the 16 million handsets sold in India were in the CDMA segment.ZTE aims to sell CDMA and GSM handsets in India in 60:40 ratio in the next few years as against the current 70:30.

Source:financialexpress