ZTE swung back to profit in 2013, with the vendor attributing the turnaround to LTE gains, particularly in its home Chinese market.
The company reported a profit for the year of 1.36 billion yuan ($219 million). By comparison, ZTE posted an annual loss – its first ever - of 2.84 billion yuan in 2012.
While revenue for 2013 fell 10.6% to 75.2 billion yuan, gross profit margins increased by 8.7 percentage points to 37.4%.
ZTE's LTE revenue also surged 200% to $800 million. The company benefited from China's long-awaited 4G rollouts, securing large shares of the three operators' network tenders. IHS last month estimated that ZTE was the top LTE vendor in China by share of domestic tenders won in 2013.
Operating revenue from Mainland China totalled 35.63 billion yuan – or 47.4% of ZTE's overall operating revenue.
Overseas, ZTE said it had made progress with efforts to focus on major markets and mainstream operator partners.
But revenue from terminal products declined in 2013 due to lower demand for feature phones and data cards.
Looking ahead, ZTE said it plans to continue to focus its resources on areas with high growth potential, including next-generation smartphones and wearable devices, the Internet of Things, cloud computing and smart cities.