21 April 2015, Beijing, China/Düsseldorf, Germany– ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the Mobile Internet, is taking part in roundtable talks between the Government of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Chinese investors in Beijing this week. The roundtable discussions were initiated and hosted by NRW Prime Minister, Hannelore Kraft, who was accompanied by NRW’s Minister for Economics, Energy, Industry and Commerce, Garrelt Duin. ZTE’s CEO Shi Lirong shared the company’s thoughts on how ZTE could contribute its technical expertise to help enable digital development in NRW.

Earlier in the year, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia released her agenda for digital change in the region and invited ZTE and other ICT companies in NRW to share their ideas. The Prime Minister previously met with Shi Lirong at CeBit, Hannover in March 2015, to discuss the company’s latest eGovernment and Smart City solutions. At the roundtable talks in Beijing, both parties continue to discuss possible digital innovations in NRW.

"ZTE is one of the largest Chinese investors that we have in North Rhine-Westphalia”, said Garrelt Duin, Minister for Economics, Energy, Industry and Commerce. “Co-operating with ICT companies from China is important, and can help our engineering companies and companies in the machine industry, to preserve and consolidate their leadership in the age of “Industry 4.0” and “smart factory”. We can now bring to life an ideal combination of established German industry expertise and new innovative companies from Asia."

Shi Lirong, ZTE CEO, said, ZTE established a subsidiary in Germany in 2004 and its products and solutions have been widely applied in major German telecom operators and across different enterprises.

“The future holds further possibilities of co-operation between the state of NRW and ZTE. We have experienced a rapid transformation from a telecoms equipment provider to an ICT solution provider in recent years and are confident our expertise could create a real benefit for all people living in NRW, making lives easier, healthier and safer.”

ZTE now employs more than 1000 people in Germany, the majority of them in NRW. The company continues to make investments in order to maintain employment stability, with Germany the main target of ZTE’s strategic focus in Europe. Smart City and Government and Enterprise solutions now belong to the company’s three major strategic businesses and are a key growth engine for business development. As a result of this success, ZTE now has more than 3,000 cooperative Government and Enterprise partners globally, some of them already based in Europe.