Datang Telecom Technology

Founding and listing

In 1998 the China Academy of Telecommunications Technology, a research institute under the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, was transformed into both a research institute and a holding company by incorporating Datang Telecom Technology on 21 September 1998 under the Companies Law of China, together with thirteen other promoters, in Beijing's Haidian new technology development zone. On 21 October 1998 DTT was listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange under the stock code 600198. The research institute subsequently adopted the trading name Datang Telecom Group.

TD-SCDMA era and first delisting crisis

During the 2G and 3G eras Datang Telecom was regarded as one of China's four major domestic telecommunications equipment manufacturers alongside Julong Telecom, ZTE and Huawei, and its corporate group held the intellectual property of TD-SCDMA, one of the three international 3G standards. The standard's limited commercial success weighed heavily on the company: from 2009 onwards its net profit excluding non-recurring items was negative for more than a decade, and between its 1998 listing and late 2020 it accumulated net losses of roughly 5.4 billion yuan.

The company's disclosure record also drew regulatory scrutiny. Its 2004 annual report overstated profit by 37.18 million yuan, prompting investor lawsuits for false statements, and a former director was sanctioned by the China Securities Regulatory Commission for insider trading in one of China's earliest insider-trading civil compensation cases. After consecutive losses in 2005 and 2006, the stock was placed under "ST" special treatment by the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 30 April 2007; the company avoided delisting by returning to profit through asset disposals, and the designation was removed on 5 June 2009.

Expansion into chip design

In March 2012, Datang Telecom agreed to acquire the TD-SCDMA chip designer Leadcore Technology from its parent group, in a deal that valued a 99.36% stake at 1.627 billion yuan, alongside handset design firm Shanghai Uniscope Technologies and its subsidiary Qidong Uniscope Electronics. Leadcore became the core of the company's integrated circuit design business, providing 3G and 4G mobile terminal chips and solutions.

In May 2017, Leadcore signed an agreement with Qualcomm (China), JAC Capital and Wise Road Capital to establish a Sino-foreign joint venture, JLQ Technology, to design and sell chipsets for mass-market smartphones in China. The venture had a registered capital of 2.98 billion yuan, with Qualcomm and Datang each holding 24%, JAC Capital 34.6% and Wise Road Capital 17.4%, targeting smartphones priced around US$100. The joint venture was approved by Chinese antitrust regulators in 2018.

In July 2018, the company's parent, Datang Telecom Group, was merged with FiberHome Technologies Group to form the China Information and Communication Technologies Group (CICT), a new central state-owned enterprise headquartered in Wuhan with registered capital of 30 billion yuan, which became Datang Telecom Technology's ultimate controlling shareholder.