Huawei and ZTE have emerged as the major recipients of China Mobile’s second round of 4G contracts, with Huawei winning 31% of the deals while ZTE took 34%.
Foreign vendors were not ignored but received a significantly lower proportion of the contracts. Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson each took 9%, while Nokia was awarded 8%.
Of the total number of contracts that China Mobile aims to sell this year, this second batch represents around 40% - a total of roughly 100,000 base stations. The remaining 60% of contracts – around 160,000 base stations – will be sold later on in the year.
The two Chinese vendors were each awarded 25% of China Mobile’s initial batch of 4G contracts. Awarded in September last year, this first round was worth a total of CNY20 billion. The three major Western vendors each won around 10% of the total contract value.
China Mobile is investing CNY225.2 billion this year with almost half of this going towards mobile networks. It aims to deploy over 500,000 TD-LTE 4G base stations by the end of the year, providing coverage to over 340 cities.
