Huawei and ZTE have bagged 45 percent of China Mobile 4G contracts. The initial LTE deal is worth Rs $3.3 billion.
Three Chinese vendors received the maximum.
Huawei won 25 percent of the 4G deal, while its Chinese rival ZTE received 20 percent and Datang will get 10 percent.
China Mobile is yet to officially announce the contract.
European telecom vendors Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Solutions and Networks and Ericsson also won China Mobile 4G contracts. We could not confirm whether Samsung also won any 4G deals.
According to a report in Seeking Alpha, China Mobile has handed out RMB 20 billion ($3.26 billion) worth of 4G TD-LTE base station supply contracts.
Around 60 percent of the orders are going to local vendors – Huawei (25 percent), ZTE (20 percent), and Datang (10 percent).
The rest are going to Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Solutions and Networks, and Ericsson.
Alcatel is receiving a 13 percent share of the orders (worth $424 million), and Nokia and Ericsson are each receiving 11 percent (worth $359 million).
China Mobile is procuring 207,000 LTE base stations. The purchases will consume a large chunk of the $7 billion the world’s biggest carrier has allocated this year to 4G capex, ahead of the expected arrival of government licenses at year’s end.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that Huawei and ZTE have obtained about 25 percent each of the total 4G procurement in China Mobile’s tender this year. European vendors Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent SA and Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) have obtained a share of around 10 percent each.
The Chinese government is likely to issue licences later this year, which will help China Mobile compete better with its rivals China Unicom and China Telecom, which have better 3G technologies.
And with Apple expected to unveil its next iPhone and a cheaper version next month that will likely support China Mobile’s 4G TD-LTE technology, everything seems to be falling in place for the two giants to sign an agreement.
China Mobile is the only Chinese carrier without an iPhone contract, which will be key to lifting the percentage of higher-end, data-crunching users on its network.
