Chinese vendors win nearly all of China Mobile’s 5G business – there’s a shock

China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile operator, has completed the second phase of its 5G tender and 86% of the work went to Huawei and ZTE.

The news comes courtesy of C114.com.cn and is written in Chinese, so we’re once more indebted to our China correspondent for a translation, as Google Translate really struggles with that language. “China Mobile’s second phase 5G construction has selected bid winners, total investment CNY 37.1 billion. Huawei and ZTE combined win 86% of the total,” reads the headline.

The main event is the table below, which displays the following information, from left to right: Province | Number of base stations | Huawei | ZTE | Ericsson | China Information Communication Technologies Group Corporation. Underneath each vendor is the bidding price in CNY and the proportion of the base stations won.

Some of the mechanics of the bidding process remain a mystery, especially with such similar bids yielding such different proportions. In one province Ericsson seems to have out-bid CICT but got a smaller proportion of the work. Notable by its absence is Nokia, which apparently did get involved but failed to win anything.

While we’re sure everything about the bidding process was totally transparent and above board, it comes as no surprise to see the process dominated by Chinese vendors. All the aggro around Huawei and the US was already threatening a balkanisation of the technology industry and growing western criticism of China’s role in the coronavirus pandemic will surely only accelerate that process.