ZTE's bestseller in Europe last year was the X760, a 2G handset with sales of more than 1.5 million units, Xiong said.

"In contrast to the belief that 2G handsets aren't selling well in Europe, the success of the X760 convinced us that Chinese phone makers still have chances to attain commercial successes overseas if they offer customers exactly what they want," Xiong said.

ZTE's next focus is the North American market, the largest single mobile phone market worth nearly $26 billion that accounts for approximately 20 percent of the global market.

The phone maker's competitive edge in securing contracts from operators for tailor-made handsets will help the company to achieve sales breakthroughs in the United States, another market dominated by telecom operators, although U.S. retailers generally abide by a no-questions-asked return policy for all products, Xiong said.

TD-SCDMA competence

In the home market, predictions claimed China would produce more 3G handsets than 2G phones this year. Domestic sales of ZTE's wireless terminal products stood at nearly 20 million units last year, up almost 200 percent compared with 2008, Xiong said.

The MWC allowed ZTE to showcase its strengths and achievements in TD-SCDMA technology-based products.

Thanks to a final push for 3G telecom services in China earlier last year and increased spending by telecom operators on tailor-made handsets, ZTE sold TD-SCDMA (a homegrown 3G technology) handsets to 3 million of China's over 600 million mobile services subscribers last year.

"ZTE is absolutely the number one in terms of last year's sales of TD-SCDMA and CDMA handsets in the domestic market," Xiong said. The company expects its new TD-SCDMA subscribers to exceed 18 million in the world's largest mobile communications market this year.

Still, overseas sales generated about 70 percent of the company's handset revenues last year. It has yet to promote TD-SCDMA-based handsets among users outside of China, Latin American and Africa.

A pre-4G foothold

In addition to its glitzy performance in the handset market, ZTE is striving to gain a foothold in researching and developing the next generation of mobile technologies.

It introduced its latest LTE-enabled data card, the AL600, at the MWC, pledging to introduce more LTE products this year. LTE, short for Long Term Evolution, is the last step toward the 4G radio technologies designed to increase the capacity and speed of mobile telephone networks.

Sales of ZTE's data cards increased by more than 400 percent last year, Xiong said.

Nearly 2,000 engineers specialized either in system solutions or terminal products have worked together on LTE technologies and products for more than two years and will upgrade the technologies to support the TD-SCDMA network this October, said Zhang Liang of ZTE.

"Small-scale commercial trials cannot be expected until the end of this year," Zhang said.

LTE technologies and standards have won more supporters than other pre-4G technologies. China Mobile, which was licensed to construct and run China's TD-SCDMA network, joined global operators such as UK-based Vodafone, Japanese NTT DoCoMo, American AT&T and Verizon in adopting LTE standards. With the help of Motorola, China Mobile will provide a TD-LTE trial network with a much higher transmission speed at the Shanghai Expo starting this May.

ZTE has inked more than 10 contracts with operators worldwide to deploy trial LTE networks on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Spain, Singapore, the United States and Hungary, He said.