SHENZHEN, China--Why did the publisher of RCR Wireless News visit China earlier this month? In many respects, it was to see first hand the explosive growth of the Chinese wireless market. The primary reasons, however, were threefold.

First, RCR Wireless News has always been known for its editorial excellence on all things wireless. With more than 50% of the world's population located in the Asia Pacific and more than 720 million mobile-phone subscribers in China alone, the United States (in spite of recently surpassing Japan as having the most 3G subscribers) is not the center of the universe in terms of wireless trends. As a result, RCR Wireless News will be allocating more time and resources comparing and contrasting wireless and mobile trends across multiple continents. This goal of this trip was to better understand the Asia-Pacific markets, starting with China.

Second, RCR's mission is to connect our clients with customers and industry professionals online, in person and in print (digital and paper). Additionally, our core values include listening to our customers while delivering innovative and measurable solutions. ZTE and Huawei long have been two of our largest customers, yet we have never visited their corporate offices.

Finally, we wanted to better understand how two companies, Huawei and ZTE, have been able to sustain double-digit growth and grow their employee base to more than 150,000 people in spite of one of the toughest economies since the Great Depression.

So, with Mary Meeker's 652-page “The Mobile Internet Report” in hand, I set off for a 10-day trip to China, which included stops in Shenzhen to visit ZTE and Huawei's global headquarters; Beijing to meet with Gemalto, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson, Marbridge Consulting, Symbio and Allied Development Group; and finally Hong Kong, where I visited with the CEOs from CSL and SmarTone-Vodafone, VP of sales for Sequans, along with key leaders of the Mobile Marketing Association – Sean Rach, Director, Digital Media & Corporate Events, Prudential Corp., Asia, and Cecilia ­­­Yim, Digital Director, OgilvyOne Worldwide.

Here is what I found:

· Mobile communications is a strategic and foundational element to China's economic engine and job growth. Huawei and ZTE no doubt are directly benefiting from China's thoughtful and long-term spectrum allocation policies and China's three state-owned wireless operators. It should be noted that Ericsson and other global equipment and device companies also are benefiting from the growth of China's mobile subscriber base. Perhaps the U.S. and other companies could learn a thing or two about the importance of investing heavily in infrastructure. The $7.5 million made available under the Broadband Stimulus Plan is a drop in the bucket and as we have seen, has had little to no impact on the unemployment rate.

· ZTE and Huawei's experiences in serving roughly two-thirds of China's 700 million+ mobile subscriber base have given them the expertise to garner the lion's share of LTE deployments. Gartner projects that Ericsson, Huawei and ZTE will lead the way in LTE. Both ZTE and Huawei have tightly integrated product sets from base stations to handsets to core networks coupled with the ability to provide turnkey installations. Moreover, both companies have developed unified platforms capable of providing innovative and customized solutions for GSM, HSPA, CDMA (and all the variants), WiMAX, Wi-Fi, femtocells and LTE. Given the patch-quilt architecture of existing mobile operator networks in the developed countries, this expertise and experience is proving to be one of, if not the key, driver in winning new contracts.

· Chinese mobile consumers -- all 700 million-plus of them -- will quickly embrace 3G services and smart devices, which will dynamically change the wireless landscape. The Chinese have already embraced social networking, which will spill over the wireless space, leading to a new explosion of games, content and other applications. With more than 1.3 billion people living in the country, China will lead the rest of the world in mobile content adoption, simply through the sheer size of the population.

· In spite of concerns over censorship (yes Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and Google docs are blocked in China), social networking is very big in the country. More than 1 billion text messages are sent daily and companies like Biadu and Tencent are two of the largest social-networking companies in the world.

· Together, ZTE and Huawei have more than 150,000 employees, of which more than 40,000 are in research and development. ZTE has grown from 13,000 employees to more than 65,000 employees since 2002.

· Since being declared a Special Enterprise Zone in 1972, Shenzhen's population has increased 32 times to more than 10 million people, whose average age is 29. More than 40 markets in China have populations of more than 1 million.

· China's smartphone and 3G penetration levels are basically at zero today and in a few short years should reach hundreds of millions of people. This will have a significant impact on the global economy – including Google's Android operating system, as well as companies like Apple, Intel, and Dell.

· Technology companies are positioned for enormous wealth creation during the next decade, whereas in the words of Douglas Li, CEO of Hong Kong mobile network SmarTone-Vodafone, “technology is scalable globally, mobile networks are not." Li's greatest concern is the destruction of mobile operator shareholder value due to price cuts and lack of innovation by mobile network operators. CSL's CEO, Tarek Robbiati, speaking from a "global citizen" point of view, expressed strong concerns over regulators' narrow and shortterm views on spectrum policy, as well as government's inability to see the long-term benefits of rewarding investment in mobile communications infrastructure, measured in terms of job and economic growth. Tarek commented that analysts, regulators and politicians underestimate how much it really costs to build and operate broadband networks.

· While China's Ministry of Information Telecommunications and its marketing research firm publish information on its Web sites regularly, one needs to pay attention daily to their Web sites as the information is updated often -- and sometimes removed quickly.

· Both ZTE and Huawei, like almost all multinational companies, struggle with globalizing their brands. That said, both appear to be working hard to globalize -- and in the case of North America -- westernize their brands for the U.S. and Canadian markets. One tip that has worked well for proven global companies – hiring local management will go a long way in terms of building trust and improving communications.

· The average wages for university graduate level workers in ZTE's manufacturing facility is $300 to $500 per month and the average wage for university graduate level software engineers is rough $400, according to Symbio. With state-of-the-art facilities, huge economies of scale and college-level wages of less that $10,000 annually, it does not take a Harvard MBA to figure out that Chinese manufacturers and software developers have a significant price advantage in the marketplace.

Well, enough opining on my recent trip. Click here to read my profile on ZTE.

Please note the following:

· We have provided a link in each profile to a separate section on our Web site, which will feature additional information on each company.

· We encourage you to read Mary Meeker's report from Morgan Stanley titled, “The Mobile Internet Report,"which was published in December.

· Stay tuned for upcoming announcements regarding RCR Market Intelligence, a new service from RCR Wireless News.

· Join us in Barcelona as we co-host Mobile Sunday on Feb. 15. in partnership with Mobile Monday chapters from around the world. Register to attend today.

Next week I'll write about my visit at Huawei. -- Jeff Mucci, RCR Wireless News. You can contact me at jmucci@ardenmediaco.com.

Click here to get more information on my time with ZTE.

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