ZTE Corp. announced on Wednesday that it has been ranked third by industry analyst firm, Ovum in the global optical networking (ON) market.

According to Ovum, ZTE posted the strongest gains for the first quarter of 2010 and a strong increase in overall revenues to rise from its previous position as the seventh-ranked vendor in 1Q09.

The Ovum findings highlight that while most of the top 10 ON vendors witnessed double digit percentage revenue declines for Q1 2010 as compared to Q1 2009, ZTE recorded a 33% sequential rise in overall revenues for Q1 2010.

Apart from this, the worldwide optical networking spending in Q1 2010 declined to $ 3.2 billion at a decline of 8% on a yoy basis. Regionwise, Ovum ranks Asia Pacific region to post fairly reasonable growth while the North American market is likely to scale back to recovery. However the EMEA and SCA regions are likely to witness continued slow down mode.

“Many vendors have seen benefits from operators’ need to revamp their mobile backhaul networks to cope with broadband traffic, new services and new devices. In this regard, ZTE’s competitive position in the China market was a strong plus for it in 1Q10,” commented Matt Walker, a Principal Analyst on Ovum’s Network Infrastructure team.

 “ZTE made great strides in the optical network markets in 2009, especially in the PTN market where ZTE got a gigantic win in China Mobile’s PTN tender. The scale of this networking project huge with stringent networking requirements, and clinching the contract was a great encouragement to both ZTE and its customers. ZTE PTN equipments have been widely deployed in some Asia-Pacific countries as well as in several mobile telecommunication operators (MTO) in Europe and America”, said Mr. Fan Xiaobing, General Manager of ZTE’s bearer network product line.