First of all ZTE is not an indian company, ZTE is a chinese company.
The point is that they were historically OEMs and you'd have never known their name.
If patents and royalties are the roadblock for Indian companies for not being able to tap into the market then how where chinese companies tap the market?
Chinese companies are willing to either spend the money or go through all of the trouble of corporate espionage. Sometimes both. In Indian companies, not so much is spent on R&D - they seem to expect the technology to be handed to them on a silver platter (at least, the basic policies that are in place at the moment certainly suggest that: in order to sell equipment in this country, MNCs have to share the source code to allow Indian companies to develop their own versions or whatever).
Can you name them please ?
Bharti (Beetel), HFCL, Shyam,
Tata, ITI, BHEL, BEL, PUNCOM & SCL all manufacture equipment and components.
Very few companies are interested in joining hands with Indian Mobile phone manufacturers.
And most of the Indian mobile phone manufacturers are just rebranding the chinese handsets.
I heard that it is because, it would be very cheaper to import from china instead of manufacturing it here.
I heard that, our government is adding VAT to items manufactured here and not for goods imported from china.
Actually I have a feeling it's a quality issue more than a cost issue. India can manufacture things as cheaply (or more cheaply) than the Chinese, but the quality of Chinese equipment may be being perceived as being higher than Indian. The Chinese are selling worldwide - and a lot in India - whereas Indian companies are not for whatever reason. ZTE and
Huawei are perfect examples of this - they're not the newest kids on the block, but in terms of market share they have just about sprung up overnight (that being in the last 3-5 years, compared to companies like
Cisco, Ericsson,
Motorola, NSN etc who have been dominating the landscape since the '90s or even earlier).