When BusinessWeek recently ranked the top 20 Chinese brands, ZTE was bound to have a place of honor. It has built up a terrific reputation for developing and delivering aggressively.

Started in 1985 in Shenzhen, China, its 31000-strong team shoots across the spectrum with its wide range of product lines. It competes with Tier 1 vendors as well as small ones for CPE devices. Claiming to spend 10% of its revenue (that’s $2.7 billion in 2005) on R&D, it has earned grudging respect from its competitors.

It has struck deals with most big players (Intel, Fujitsu, Ericsson, France Telecom, Hutchison Whampoa, to name a few). It has won plenty of deals (Serbia, parts of Europe, Angola, Morocco, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and of course China too). Its first wireless win in North America is a deal with Telus to supply EV-DO cards.

But then, why is it a dark dragon? Well, unlike most other vendors who shout hoarsely from rooftops about every teeny-weeny twiddle bit of progress, it keeps a relatively quieter profile. Although accused of unleashing a price war, its plus points are its massive investment in development and its ability to compete across the market segments. In WiMAX, it is one of the few players to have products in the fixed and mobile categories. It has not publicized its WiMAX strategy much and there has not been much of a buzz in China about WiMAX either. If China is planning to bolster the wireless offerings during the Olympics in 2008 with WiMAX, then ZTE stands a good chance of winning that deal too.

Further Reading:

The BusinessWeek article on China’s Top 20 Brands
ZTE to supply Sprint Nextel with WiMAX devices
ZTE’s win in India
Recent ZTE and Telus announcement.
Another example of ZTE expansion.

Here’s a recipe that will interest you. Take a celebrity and start a service company in broadband wireless. Toss in $900 million from Intel and Motorola. Stir up measly revenue of $33m in 2005. Serve barely 162,000 customers (as of Sep 2006). And there you have it: the recipe of Clearwire that always raises a lot of interest.

Headquartered in Kirkland, Washington, Clearwire is a wireless service provider, the latest baby of Craig McCaw (of McCaw Cellular which was sold to AT&T, XO and Teledesic fame). It offers “off-the-shelf” wireless broadband internet solutions in about 370 cities in US. Their offering is not that spectacular: 1.5Mbps-256kbps upload-download at the most.

Clearwire is still trial-testing mobile WiMAX jointly with Intel and Motorola. And, they own the spectrum! So, what could they do next? Expand rapidly as soon as they find the WiMAX trials successful? Team up with Sprint-Nextel to provide choices for customers? Will the cellular carriers like the competition to 3G/EVDO or like the choice-offerings better? Sure, there are lots of gripes about the company’s current plans and services on the web, but then who said that being a service company is easy.

Given the background, it is not surprising to find all focus on this company revolving around McCaw. He is big on autonomy, creating and giving value to customers. He believes in assembling a great team and giving them the autonomy to perform. So, will this recipe lead to a feast or a disappointment? Marinating in time and checking back seems to be the answer.

Further Reading:

A Business 2.0 article on Clearwire
A Forbes’ mention of Clearwire
On ZDNet
Om Malik’s take
On the Clearwire financials