South Korea-based Samsung has emerged as the biggest winner in the CDMA contracts floated by China Telecom in its planned procurement of 5 million CDMA cell phones, a move forming the part of the country’s restructuring program.

Samsung bagged the biggest order of 1 million sets, representing 20 percent of the total CDMA contract, followed by Shenzhen-based ZTE, LG, Hisense, and Huawei Technologies.

ZTE won a contract of 900,000 sets, ranking the second place. As a big CDMA cell phone manufacturer, ZTE will provide China Telecom with five latest CDMA models, covering market at all levels.

Though LG has been boasting of the largest shipment of CMDA cell phones globally, it can hardly compete head-to-head with Samsung in China.

Motorola grabbed 3 percent of the contracts from China Telecom with merely one model. Lately the company rolled out its latest CDMA cell phone V950 in North America, which was co-developed with telecom carriers Sprint and Cellular.

Hisense won 10 percent of the contracts. In early 2002, Hisense unveiled the first CDMA handset of China C2101. And it has been in the list of low- and mid-end CMDA suppliers of China Telecom during the past a couple of years.

Some of the names that were on the list for the first time included- Ningbo Bird, K-Touch OKwap, Gionee, GXT, and Aigo.

Total of 30 telecom equipment makers had bid for the contracts.