ZTE is eyeing to sponsor more NBA teams to boost its presence in the United States. (Photo : Reuters)
2014 was a good year for telecommunications supplier ZTE Corp. The company has reported a 94-percent increase in net profit for the past year. Executives from the firm have attributed the growth to an increasing demand for mobile services in and outside China.
The Shenzhen-based mobile services firm said that its unaudited profits for 2014 was 2.64 billion yuan ($423 million). The profit was a huge leap from the previous year's 1.36 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, the company posted revenue of 81.2 billion yuan to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, an increase of 7.99 percent from 2013.
According to the company, the progress of 4G services in the past year has increased the demand for 4G network base stations. Telecommunications companies China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom have only projected 500,000 base stations for 2014. But by the end of the year, 700,000 were built to provide services to the 75 million 4G users in the country.
The rise of mobile video services and applications is one of the key drivers for more customers to opt for 4G network.
A report in Companies and Markets noted that users of mobile video services have increased by 148 percent in Dec. 2014 compared to the previous year. As such, the need for faster network and smartphones has increased, forcing telco firms to put up more base stations.
Meanwhile, the company's smartphone business has also expanded. However, the growth experienced was overseas and not in the domestic market. The demand from emerging markets such as Southeast Asia and Africa has helped boost the business.
While domestic and overseas markets each cover half of the company's smartphone revenues, an executive from ZTE believes that the overseas market would soon overtake the local business by 2020.
The United States and Europe remain the firm's biggest markets, with the company hoping to double its sales of smartphone units in the U.S. by 20 million this year.
