[An employee works on a communications equipment assembly line at a ZTE Corp. factory in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China, on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2009. [Photo:CFP]]

Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE has opened a new factory in the city of Xi'an.

The new factory in Shaanxi's capital will manufacture smart devices, including mobile phones and tablet computers.

The factory is going to be ZTE's main manufacturing base in the country's west.

ZTE expects the new facility will put out around 15 million handsets a year to start with.

The company also says the factory has the potential to triple capacity within 5-years.

ZTE says factory is going to create around 3-thousand jobs in the region.

The company shipped more than 100 million smart devices last year, including 48 million cellphones.

ZTE is hoping to expand that figure to 60 million mobile phones this year.