China 3 G tender - 5 firms to divide the pie

­Huawe­i, Motorola and Ericsson are reported to have been the biggest winners in the latest WCDMA infrastructure tender from China Unicom. The firm believed to have issued a tender to cover 55 cities in 30 provinces - the first stage in a rollout to cover 282 cities with a total CAPEX of around US$11 billion during 2009. Huawei is understood to have won 30.6% of the tender - and will carry out the work in cooperation with Motorola, which outsourced manufacturing parts to Huawei. Ericsson and its partners (New Postcom and FiberHome) secured a 25.6 per cent share.

In a move which surprised industry watchers, ZTE managed to take 21.5% of the tender - despite being weaker in the WCDMA market than its rivals. Nokia Siemens Networks took 11.1% of the tender, followed by Alcatel-Lucent which picked up 10.2 percent.

China Unicom is pushing to launch its 3G network by the middle of May this year - in an effort to catch up with China Mobile which has been building its own trial 3G network for over a y