ZTE says it is 'fully prepared' to deploy 5G

China's second-largest telecom equipment maker, ZTE Corp, said it is "fully prepared" for the large-scale deployment of the 5G network as the company races to take a leading position in driving the world into a new era.

The Shenzhen-based company revealed Wednesday that so far it has  delivered more than 50,000 5G base stations worldwide.

A day earlier, it announced it has obtained 25 5G commercial contracts globally and has already been committed to partnerships with over 60 operators across the world.

"We are fully prepared in terms of production capacity. Our two production facilities — one in Shenzhen and the other in Nanjing — will provide strong support for the production of 5G devices," Zhang Wanchun, senior vice president of ZTE Corp, said in an interview at Mobile World Congress Shanghai on Wednesday.

The company said it places 5G as its core development strategy and has been making great effort in research and standardization of 5G technology.

It has filed more than 3,500 5G patent applications and is working with more than 20 operators around the world in the development of 5G terminals, including smartphones, mobile hotspots and data terminals.

"We have been investing very heavily on research and development. Over the past years, R&D expenditure accounted for more than 10 percent of our revenue," Zhang said, noting that the company will further increase its investment in R&D in the coming years.

ZTE Corp reported 3.093 billion yuan ($450 million) in R&D investment over the first quarter, taking up 13.9 percent of the company's operating revenue. That represents an increase of 4.1 percentage points  from the same period last year, which was 9.8 percent.

Global telecom industry players are ramping up efforts to grab a market share of the 5G network. The next-generation mobile network, which features super fast speed and low latency, will be used to power the industrial internet, autonomous driving, virtual reality and other technologies.

Huawei Technologies is currently leading the market with 50 commercial contracts on a global scale. Finland's Nokia comes in with 43 contracts, while Sweden's Ericsson has reported 22.

China is accelerating the pace to march into the 5G era. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially rolled out commercial 5G licenses to three major telecom carriers, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, as well as the state-owned China Broadcasting Network Corp in early June.

According to the Global System for Mobile Communications Association, China is expected to become the world's largest 5G market by 2025, with 460 million 5G users, more than the combined number in Europe and the United States.

The country's telecom carriers are projected to spend 900 billion to 1.5 trillion yuan in total on 5G network construction from 2020 to 2025, according to a report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.