ZTE revenue in 2013 dips 11% to $12 bn, despite 200% growth in 4G LTE

Chinese telecom networking vendor ZTE today said its 2014 revenue dipped 10.6 percent to $12.11 billion (RMB 75.2 billion).

ZTE could not report an increase in its revenue despite its 4G LTE business income growing 200 percent to $800 million.

Interestingly, ZTE did not share specific details on the components of its annual revenue. Telecom vendors such as Nokia Solutions Networks (NSN) and Ericsson share segment wise and region wise revenue details.

ZTE generates revenue from telecommunications equipment, enterprise network solutions and mobile devices. Whenever, it announces financial reports, it shares information which is important to the company during the particular year. ZTE does not have a standard format.

ZTE

Today, ZTE said it achieved 200 percent growth in 4G LTE revenue. It never reported its 4G revenue earlier. It is also silent about its ambitious enterprise business revenue. ZTE did not even share the revenues from mobile units it sold last year. It says it achieved 37.4 percent gross profit margin from operator network against 28.7 percent in 2012.

ZTE tried to highlight the fact that it has turn around with a profit of RMB 1.36 billion. Main growth driver — ZTE says — for the profit is the result of 4G growth. During the previous quarter, ZTE attributed its growth to strategies to reduce expenditure and focus on performance and efficiencies.

ZTE reported operating revenue of RMB 35.63 billion from the mainland China market, accounting for 47.4 percent of the company’s overall operating revenue. Smart City metropolitan information systems, cloud computing and the Internet of Things were the other revenue contributors.

It reported operating revenue of RMB 39.60 billion from international operations, accounting for 52.6 percent of overall operating revenue.

In 2013, operating revenue from terminal products decreased due to lower demand for feature phones and data cards.

Smartphones and other smart terminal products contribute a bigger percentage of total revenue, driven by the rapid development of the Mobile Internet. While maintaining and enhancing ZTE’s competitive edge in hardware, the company will also be focused on developing software and services to provide improved user experience to consumers through innovation.

Future focus

ZTE will focus on areas such as 4G technologies, broadband infrastructure, smartphones, wearable devices, Internet of Things, Cloud computing, Smart City, information security, etc.

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