With Ericsson, Nokia and even Huawei feeling the chill of the slowdown in mobile network capex investment, ZTE is doing rather better, and delivered a rise of almost 30% in its first half net profits, thanks to gains both in carrier networks and devices. This seemed to buck the trend elsewhere, which saw Ericsson and Huawei announcing job cuts in the same week. This does spark speculation that ZTE and Samsung, the also-rans of mobile infrastructure, could pick up market share in the run-up to 5G. Both have invested heavily in 5G R&D and made a name for themselves in some specific, but central technologies – ZTE in Massive MIMO, for instance, and Samsung in millimeter wave. Both these companies…