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ZTE stated it’s positioning its enterprise round a mixed connectivity and computing mannequin, increasing its position in AI infrastructure alongside its established telecom portfolio
In sum – what to know:
AI shift – Computing reached 27% of income as demand for AI infrastructure grows and turns into a bigger a part of ZTE’s total enterprise combine.
Provider weak spot – Lowered home telecom capex weighed on the community phase, impacting total profitability regardless of income development.
International development – Worldwide markets and enterprise demand are serving to offset home pressures and assist enlargement in computing and gadgets.
Chinese language vendor ZTE is reporting a rising contribution from its computing enterprise because it continues to shift towards AI-related infrastructure and providers.
The corporate posted income of CNY 34.99 billion ($5.1 billion) within the first quarter of 2026, up 6.1% year-on-year, with computing accounting for 27% of complete income.
The rising share displays rising demand for AI infrastructure and associated platforms, partly offsetting weaker spending from home telecom operators.
Development throughout the first quarter of the yr was supported by double-digit features in computing, house and private gadgets, and worldwide markets. These segments helped counter a decline in home service funding, which weighed on the corporate’s conventional community enterprise. Web revenue attributable to shareholders reached CNY1.31 billion, whereas revenue declined year-on-year because of softer infrastructure spending in China.
ZTE stated it’s positioning its enterprise round a mixed connectivity and computing mannequin, increasing its position in AI infrastructure alongside its established telecom portfolio. The Asian vendor is growing an end-to-end framework spanning infrastructure, platforms, purposes and gadgets, with a give attention to supporting enterprise and large-scale computing use circumstances.
In its community phase, ZTE launched new switching and interconnect applied sciences geared toward AI workloads, together with a high-capacity chassis change designed for large-scale clusters and an answer enabling distributed computing throughout distances of as much as 300 km. These developments are supposed to assist the rising want to attach and handle compute assets throughout a number of areas, ZTE stated.
Worldwide markets remained a key supply of development, pushed by ongoing 5G deployments, fiber rollouts, and rising demand for computing infrastructure. ZTE stated it is usually deepening collaboration with Chinese language enterprises increasing abroad.
Trying forward, ZTE stated it expects AI to stay a central driver of its enterprise, with continued funding in infrastructure, ecosystem partnerships, and operational integration.
“China Cellular is reducing its communication community capex by greater than 20% in 2026, whereas rising its computing infrastructure capex by over 60%. The opposite Chinese language telcos take comparable methods. So, ZTE has no alternative however to develop its computing infrastructure enterprise to maintain its development. On the opposite facet, not like some Chinese language distributors banned by the U.S., ZTE can nonetheless work with the U.S. chip suppliers similar to Nvidia and Intel. This turns into a major differentiator of ZTE when it develops enterprise with Chinese language Web hyperscalers, similar to Alibaba and ByteDance, and explores the worldwide market,” Guang Yang, senior principal analyst at Omdia, instructed RCR Wi-fi Information.
“In 2025, ZTE’s computing infrastructure income was boosted by the large contracts from these Web giants. Nevertheless, the contracts from Web giants are extra like a double-edged sword. They will enhance the income, but additionally considerably compress ZTE’s revenue. ZTE should discover a strategy to steadiness its development and profitability in 2026,” the analyst stated.
For full 2025, ZTE had reported income of CNY 133.90 billion, up 10.4% year-on-year, with web revenue reaching CNY 5.62 billion. Throughout 2025, the corporate maintained robust R&D funding at CNY 22.76 billion, round 17% of complete income.
Development final yr was pushed primarily by its computing phase, the place income rose roughly 150% year-on-year to symbolize 24.6% of complete income, supported by robust demand for servers, storage, and information middle options linked to AI deployments.