Jane Chen / Shanghai Daily news

China's largest publicly-traded telecommunications manufacturer, ZTE Corp, has joined Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecom's global mobile phone sales network, making another foray into the overseas market, today's China Business News reported, citing a source close to the Shenzhen-based company's sales department.
Earlier this year ZTE agreed to supply 3G phones to Italy and the United Kingdom, Hutchison Telecom's two-largest overseas markets, the source revealed yesterday.
If it's successful, it will supply another 10 markets where Hutchison Telecom has obtained 3G business licenses.
Upbeat about this partnership, the source said entering Hutchison Telecom's sales network means the HK company will buy ZTE phones in countries covered by its network and that this will surely help ZTE to expand its overseas business, particuarly to developed areas such as the United States and Europe.
Overseas markets have become a new battlefield for domestic telecom companies. To gain an upper hand, ZTE has forged cooperation with other overseas telecom operators such as the UK's Vodafone Group Plc, South Korea's SK Telecom Co and France Telecom SA.
Thanks to this cooperation, ZTE had sold over 2 million phones overseas by September, mostly to such developing countries as Brazil, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Romania. While 25 percent of the deals were for the wireless Little Smart phones, 75 percent were for 3G CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) handsets.
In the first six months, sales at ZTE's overseas businesses skyrocketed 130.8 percent to 3.15 billion yuan (US$389 million), accounting for 30.5 percent of total group sales. Group phone sales declined 15 percent to 2.21 billion yuan over the same period.
It plans to unveil five or six new 3G phones this year and boost total output to 150 to 180 million from last year's 100 million.
The company has also started selling 3G WCDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) phones this year, with over 400,000 sets already on the market.