ZTE is planning to invest $314 million in a
facility to support China Unicom (Hong Kong)’s e-book service.
The Internet center in Changsha will be
expanded over the next three years to more than 1,000 workers from the present
300.
The center will support the WoReading
service that China Unicom started in April, ZTE vice president Yu Yifang said
in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.
China Unicom’s WoReading service had about
21.5 million registered users as of October 31. The service, which allows users
to download books, magazines and audio books on their phones, competes against
China Mobile’s Shouji Yuedu, which translates as “Mobile Phone Read.”
ZTE sees very big potential in winning
computing- services work from carriers who are existing customers of its
network equipment.
As ZTE diversifies beyond network gear,
cloud computing will account for one-third of sales within three to five years.
Sophia Tso, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman
for China Unicom, said she didn’t have any information immediately available,
according to a report appeared in Bloomberg.
China Unicom was among ZTE’s first
computing services customers, asking the company in November 2010 to set up an
online store for mobile applications called the WoStore. That store has
registered about 60 million downloads in its first year, ZTE’s Yu said.
China Mobile and China Unicom, the nation’s
two largest carriers, have signed up for a “virtual office” system of computer
storage and networking services that the company introduced this year.
ZTE ranks behind Huawei Technologies Co. in
phone-equipment gear sales in China. Huawei also plans to sell computing
services and aims to more than triple revenue from that business within three
to five years, to between $15 billion and $20 billion, from the $4 billion
projected this year.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
