PARTNER CONTENT: Mei Zhonghua, SVP and President of Asia-Pacific and CIS at ZTE (pictured, below), shared with Mobile World Live the company’s growth strategy across the region and highlighted its numerous customer wins across wireless and wired product lines.
The executive argued the company’s consistent investment of more than 20 per cent of total revenue in R&D over the past few years has put it in a leading position in many product categories.
For example, the latest 5G base station combines components for both the 2.6GHz and 4.9GHz bands in a single AAU and supports 64TR, making it more integrated as well as giving it a larger capacity.
Although investment in traditional connectivity may not be increasing, he said it still has the confidence to grow in the telco sector in Asia Pacific. “We are working to break into new markets and increase our market share across countries where we have made gains.”
Its terminal business in the region is divided into two segments. It supplies smartphones to operators in Japan and Australia, and in other countries sells its device on the open market by working with distributors which sell to retailers.
Although starting from a small base, its sales on the open market is its best performing business, with sales up more than 100 per cent this year, and he said it “hopes to double that again next year”.
Market share
Across Asia Pacific in 2024, it expanded into a number of new markets, including securing deals with the largest mobile player in Bangladesh, Grameenphone. On the wireless side, it increased its RAN market share with the operator to 35 per cent from 20 per cent, and deployed its packet core as well as a managed service for the entire network.
It also supplies RAN gear to Veon’s unit in Kazakhstan, the number one mobile operator by mobile subscribers.
Markets where it is looking to gain RAN business is in the Philippines, where the two major players use other vendors, he said.
“ZTE is already working with most of the mainstream fixed-line operators in the Asia-Pacific region, with a number of breakthroughs with clients in the region,” Mei said.
It is now shipping 10GPON gear and Wi-Fi 7 routers to J-Com, the largest TV and a major fixed-line provider in Japan, and started to work with PLDT in the Philippines on both optical line terminal (OLT) and optical network terminal (ONT) parts.
Looking at the core network, he said it picked up business from Telkomsel in Indonesia, and after the merger of True and dtac in Thailand, the operator deployed ZTE’s UDM (Unified Data Management) core network product.
In Malaysia, following Celcom and Digi uniting, ZTE took 100 per cent of the core network.
In the transport area, Telkom Indonesia and Telekom Malaysia both use its IP core product, which is also used by AIS in Thailand for enterprise services and True for its fixed-line network.
Data centre focus
ZTE also forecasts strong growth in its data centre and enterprise businesses, which the company refers to as second curve products, taking advantage of the rapid move to digital transformation across the region.
Mei said that shift means “everything is moving to the cloud”, driving demand for data centre space. “We have an end-to-end solution covering everything from design to final delivery. ZTE has the capability to provide uptime Tier IV, the highest level in the industry.”
Supporting its deployments across the region, it has local teams in all major countries. “We provide services, and not only sell the product. Our strong delivery capabilities include system integration work” enabling it to deliver a platform within a short timeframe, he said.
ZTE has built several large data centres in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Indonesia, where it delivered a 20MW facility to Digital Hyperspace Indonesia (DHI).
It is working with Converge, the second-largest fixed-line provider in the Philippines, which is entering the cloud business. The operator in June deployed ZTE’s Wi-Fi 7 ONU, the first to be released in Southeast Asia.
In Bangladesh, a national data centre for the government built by ZTE was the first uptime Tier IV facility in South Asia.
ZTE has delivered more than 400 data centre projects worldwide, covering an area exceeding 2.5 million square metres.
Its enterprise market in the region is on track to grow 40 per cent this year, and it expects about the same level in 2025, with the increase driven by robust sales of servers and switches.
Mei cited data from Gartner forecasting shipments of servers in Asia Pacific to reach 2 million this year, with continued brisk growth expected in the future.
In China, over the past three years ZTE was ranked number one in the server market for telcos, with more than a 25 per cent share. With growth slowing in the traditional operator market, it has focused on internet companies, the banking industry and oil and gas sector, with steady gains forecast.