The companies are already selling lots of phones. But most of those sales are coming in China, and both companies admit they have work cut out for them elsewhere, including in the United States.

China's Commerce Ministry has condemned a $1.1 trillion spending bill passed by the United States Congress last week over clauses that limit technological purchases from China, saying the limits clash with the principles of fair trade.

ZTE, the Chinese mobile device maker, will begin selling smart watches in the first quarter of 2014, signalling that the nascent market for wearable connected devices is already becoming crowded with lower-priced alternatives.

Huawei Technologies, ZTE, and Samsung Electronics were named in a new patent- infringement complaint filed by InterDigital over technology related to the latest mobile-phone standards.

The two firms should be barred from any mergers and acquisitions in the US, the panel has recommended in its report.

Chinese telecoms outfit ZTE has hit back at rumours suggesting it will respond to sliding market share and a scary balance sheet by shedding 12,000 staff. Instead, the company says, we can expect a graduate hiring spree.

Traders said they had heard that ZTE had lost a patent lawsuit with Ericsson and had to pay a penalty of EUR500 million (US$640.83 million), although a ZTE executive told Reuters that the outcome of the lawsuit was not out yet.

Intel has designed a handset that may be manufactured by China's ZTE, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The phone, based on a version of Intel's Atom microprocessor, may go on sale in China.

ZTE says it will quadruple the number of smartphones it ships globally to 12 million this year, including its first model for a top-tier wireless provider in the US Huawei, which already provides a smartphone to the smaller prepaid providers, said it is in talks with the four national carriers.

ZTE and Huawei both entered the ranks of the world's top 10 mobile phone manufacturers last year. ZTE, ranked fourth, saw its global market share rise from 2.3% in 2009 to 3.7% last year, while third-ranked LG Electronics' global market share slipped from 10.1% to 8.4%.

The pending acquisition of Motorola's mobile telecom equipment arm by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), which is pending approval by China's Ministry of Commerce, would make it more difficult for domestic rivals Huawei Technologies and ZTE to enter the US market, an analyst said.

ZTE, one of China's largest network equipment and phone suppliers, is set to buy US$3 billion worth of semiconductor components from five US technology vendors. It has signed the purchase agreements with Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, Freescale Semiconductor, Altera and Broadcom.

ZTE Corp., China's second-biggest maker of telephone equipment, is expanding in the US with an agreement to sell a handset through Verizon Wireless.

In much of the world, ZTE is better known as a maker of telecom networking equipment and data cards than cellphones. But research firm iSuppli says the Shenzhen-based company shipped enough phones during the last quarter to break into the top group of handset makers, displacing Motorola.

ZTE has said it had won 34% of China Mobile Communications's third-round 3G network expansion tender.

A group of leaders in the wireless industry comprised of Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Huawei, Kineto Wireless, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nortel, Samsung, Starent Networks, T-Mobile and ZTE have announced a joint effort, referred to as the Voice over LTE via Generic Access (VoLGA) Forum

ZTE, China's No. 2 telecoms equipment vendor, expects the country's high-speed third-generation technology to be adopted outside of China as soon as 2009, despite "flaws" that will need to be ironed out.

China's ZTE Corp said it has sealed an exclusive deal with Emcali to build Colombia's first WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) 16e network. Shenzhen-based ZTE will provide Emcali with core network and wireless access equipment as well as terminals and base stations for the 3.5G WiMAX project. The Colombian government awarded WiMAX licences to Emcali two years ago, and the company is required to make the network commercially available by the end of 2008, ZTE said in a statement.

...Initial products at launch in Baltimore were confirmed to include embedded WiMAX laptops using Intel chipsets, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet WiMAX Edition, a Samsung PC Card, a ZTE USB dongle and a ZyXEL CPE modem. Other vendors and products are expected to be approved by Sprint for use on the network and enter commercial availability in the future...