Amongst a number of highly competitive Chinese smartphone makers is ZTE. This company was recently revealed as one of the Top 5 Smartphone makers in the world, by IDC, pegging it at the fifth position. However, contrary to IDC’s claims, ZTE has posted its Q2 results with a total of 11.5 million(up from 10.1 in the report) shipments, pegging the company at an even more impressive fourth position. With this number, the company now owns a healthy 5% of the total smartphone marketshare. Several Android OEMs are finally starting to make substantial inroads into the market, is the Apple-Samsung duopoly fading fast?
The main reasons of the performance is attributed to the newer flagships from ZTE, mainly the Grand Memo, Grand S, N986 and U988s for the high-end market, and the lower-end ZTE Blade and ZTE Skate. To boost its global presence, the company also launched a range of models in India very recently. While they are certainly targeted at moving volume, we expect them to see initial performance and launch the higher end devices here too.
Apart from Android devices, the company also is in partnership with Firefox with its world’s first ZTE Open device. Apparently the device is being well received by retail partners and users alike. Adding to that, ZTE is planning to unveil its own 4G LTE chipset soon, to power its own smartphones and tablets –
the company plans to unveil its self-developed chipset to power 4G devices at the PT/EXPO COMM CHINA 2013 conference in Beijing in September. The ZTE chipset will be the first in the industry to attain 4G standards in communications and data throughput, heralding a breakthrough in 4G technology globally.
That said, we think that the fading dominance of Samsung and the uprising Chinese influence is telling. Lenovo, ZTE and Huawei are poised to be in the top 5 together if everything plays out well for these companies. As we repeatedly say, it’s an exciting industry to watch, and it always gets more exciting, so stay tuned!