ZTE Corp, China’s only listed telecoms manufacturer, and a global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions, topped the world CDMA equipment market in 2006 by number of shipments.

ZTE shipped over 12,000 units of CDMA BTS equipment from January to December 2006, 41% of the global market by number of contracts, according to China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) telecom academy. Industry analyst Ovum anticipates that ZTE will achieve 20% market share in China’s coming 3G CDMA 2000 market and will gain a rapid market share increase as a result.

To date, ZTE has deployed over 60 million lines of CDMA equipment in over 100 carriers’ networks in more than 60 countries and regions, including India, Indonesia, the Czech Republic and a variety of countries in Africa, as well as in developed markets like the US and Europe.

In India, ZTE was the sole CDMA equipment provider to the country’s three largest CDMA operators Reliance, Tata and BSNL in 2006. ZTE equipment currently accounts for 85% of BSNL’s CDMA market. ZTE has also undertaken Tata’s national rural telecoms project and has helped Reliance expand its CDMA network at the speed of one million new users per month.

In Indonesia, ZTE has worked with Indosat to expand a 3G Softswitch core network in 12 cities across the country and has been awarded a large-capacity CDMA contract by PT Telkom Indonesia.

In Africa, ZTE’s CDMA products are in use in over 70% of African countries and have helped with local telecom projects from the first national CDMA cellular network in Morocco in North Africa to the national rural network in Nigeria in West Africa.

Across Europe, ZTE constructed Europe’s first EV-DO Rev A. national network in the Czech Republic; the EV-DO network constructed by ZTE has been put into commercial use in Norway and ZTE has established a strategic partnership with OTE to deploy the first 450MHz 3G CDMA 2000 network in Estonia.

In the US, ZTE has won a 3G CDMA 2000 network with regional operators Copper Valley Group and ClearTalk and ZTE’s equipment is currently under test with several tier one carriers’ labs.