ZTE Runs Out of Wind in Bid for Sprint Contract — Uh, did anyone NOT see this coming?

I have to say that anyone who didn’t see this coming must have been asleep at the trading table, as signs from Sprint (NYSE: S) had been pretty strong that ZTE (HKEX: 763) wasn’t going to get any business in helping to build Sprint’s 4G network. You’ve got to give credit to ZTE for trying, even when the odds were very stacked against it. Truth be told, it’s probably just a matter of time before ZTE scores its first big networking equipment contract in the US. China has already shown that it’s willing to go to bat for its network equipment makers in India, and, while it hardly has the same leverage with the US government, there’s every indication that it wants its star companies like ZTE to prove they’ve really arrived on the global stage with some major US sales. Security concerns will continue to be an issue for American politicians, but now that the mid-term elections are over and the next big election is nearly two years off, I wouldn’t be surprised to see ZTE or maybe even Huawei sneak in their first major US deal sometime in the next 12 months.