ZTE says in talks with Sprint on WiMax handsets
Currently a small player in the U.S. market, Chinese phone maker aims to be one of the top five vendors in three years.
"The negotiations are going successfully," Xiong Hui, a marketing vice president for ZTE's handset division said through a translator in an interview with Reuters at the GSMA Mobile World Congress.
Sprint has said it would offer
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Hui, who declined to comment further on the Sprint talks, said that the U.S. market is key to ZTE's plans to expand beyond China, its biggest market.
"Our target market is the global market," he said. "The U.S. market is a very important market for us."
It aims to increase its devices sales to more than 50 million units in 2008 from about 30 million in 2007, including wireless data cards and phones, he said.
Hui said the company aimed to be one of the world's top five mobile vendors in the next three years.
The market is currently led by Nokia, which shipped 133.5 million handsets in the fourth quarter alone.