Chinese telecom equipment supplier, Huawei Technologies, said it will expand business in the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) market.

"ASEAN has a large population and its telecom market is of great potential," said Fu Jun, a spokesman for Huawei Technologies on Thursday.

Huawei entered the ASEAN market in 1999 and its program scale in the area rose nearly ten times. The company's program in ASEAN is expected to reach 600 million US dollars in 2005 and 1.2 billion US dollars in 2008, said Huawei.

At present, Huawei provides telecom solutions including mobile network, next generation network (NGN), broadband and intelligence network to ASEAN telecom operators. Its market share for broadband and NGN in ASEAN would reach more than 50 percent this year and the mobile products over 30 percent in 2005, Huawei noted.

The company predicted that its shares in the whole telecom equipment market in ASEAN would reach nearly 20 percent this year.

Huawei has set up its branches or agencies in seven of the ASEAN countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippines and Indonesia. It expects to employ more than 800 people in ASEAN countries by the end of this year; more than 70 percent of them will be local staff, said the company.

ZTE, another representative of China's telecom equipment suppliers, also gains a strong momentum of growth in the international market, especially in the ASEAN region. In 2004, ZTE reported sales revenue of some 22.7 billion yuan, a rise of 41.5 percent year-on-year. Its overseas sales recorded 4.894 billion yuan, up 155.29 percent over the previous year.

At the beginning of last year, ZTE signed a contract with Vietnamese railway company to build communication network. This is the first time for China's telecom equipment suppliers have entered the Vietnamese market and also Chinese companies' largest overseas program in transport communication.

ZTE set up its headquarters for the Asia-Pacific region in Singapore this April.

Globalization strategy has lowered risks of relying on one single domestic market and brought ZTE into the rank of international telecom makers, said spokesperson with the company.

ZTE has marked 2005 as the "International Year" and would expand its business in emerging telecom markets, including the ASEAN countries.

.Source: Xinhua