LONDON, March 25 (Reuters) - Chinese telecoms equipment and phone maker ZTE <0763.HK><000063.SZ> has seen interest from several carriers for vendor financing made possible by a $15 billion credit line from China Development Bank, it said.
"We are talking to several operators about such cooperation," Lin Cheng, head of the company's western European operations told a news conference in London on Wednesday.
He declined to say who they were or whether they were new customers but said they were talking about projects worth between $100 million and $1 billion in Europe and elsewhere.
Vendor financing is when a company lends money to a customer so that the customer can buy its products.
ZTE announced last week it had obtained the credit line for five years, meant to help the company to strengthen its global position, including through financing overseas projects.
The telecom market has seen cut-throat competition for new business during the past few years, partly driven by Chinese vendors such as Huawei [HWT.UL] and ZTE, which almost doubled its share of the telecoms-gear market in 2008 to 5 percent.
ZTE also expects healthy growth in its handsets business this year. Currently the world's sixth-biggest handset maker, it wants to enter the top three in five years' time.
The company is strong in low-cost phones and is also expanding into smartphones based on Microsoft's <MSFT.O> Windows Mobile and open-source Linux, but not the Symbian platform recently opened up by Nokia <NOK1V.HE>. Lin said Symbian was still too complicated.
He said ZTE was talking to Google <GOOG.O> about making a phone based on the Web giant's Android operating system but had no agreement to do so yet.
ZTE launched a new phone jointly with Deutsche Telekom's <DTEGn.DE> T-Mobile UK for the first time on Wednesday. The Vairy is a pay-as-you-go touch-screen handset that will sell for 59.99 pounds ($87.30).
Like most of ZTE's phones, the handset will carry the operator's brand rather than its own. Lin said ZTE did not yet feel Europe was ready for ZTE-branded phones.
"We have to test the water in Europe," he said. "We cannot come here with, you know, the Chinese Kung Fu man."
Lin added that a solar-powered phone that ZTE unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, which is aimed at rural communities in Africa, would sell for about $40 to $50.
ZTE made 61 percent of its sales outside China last year, and says it won about 30 percent of the Chinese third-generation market in recent 3G tender bids offered by China's three largest telecom operators.
Asked about possible interest in buying assets from Canadian telecoms gear maker Nortel <NT.TO>, which has filed for bankruptcy protection, Lin said he agreed with ZTE's chief executive that there would be no reason to do so.
"The pricing is not expensive, but if it does not increase our efficiencies, why should we?," he asked. (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Erica Billingham) ((georgina.prodhan@thomsonreuters.com; +4420 7542 7954; Reuters Messaging georgina.prodhan.reuters.com@reuters.net)) ($1=.6871 Pound)
