The
Shenzhen-based company has been trying to move away selling lower end
mobile phones, a strategy that has served it well in boosting its global
market share, but at the expense of pressuring margins and
profitability.
It plans to further raise its
global profile by sponsoring a US National Basketball Association (NBA)
team later this year, executives said.
"We're
working towards a goal of 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) gadgets making up
40-50 per cent of our total consumer devices shipments by 2015. The
percentage is quite small now about 4 per cent," Lv Qianhao, ZTE's head
of handset strategy, told reporters in China's southern city of
Guangzhou,4G LTE trials are being conducted.
ZTE
is banking on products such as its Grand Memo phablet a cross between a
phone and a tablet, and its Grand S smartphone to battle the likes of
Samsung Electronics, Apple that have been dominating the market.
On
Friday, ZTE executives showcased its LTE technology to reporters in a
mini-van by driving through skyscrapers around a section of Guangzhou
city while downloading video clips on its smartphones at speeds that are
several ten-fold faster than 3G.
ZTE has been
working closely with China Mobile, the world's largest wireless carrier
by subscribers, in 4G trials throughout the country that has more than a
billion mobile phone users.
Even though ZTE's
flagship telecom equipment business has hit stumbling blocks in
entering the U.S. market due to Washington's national security concerns,
its mobile phones have been selling quite well, ZTE executives said.
"We
have plans to sponsor an NBA team that Chinese consumers will say wow
to, but we are still negotiating and nothing has been decided," ZTE
spokesman David Dai said.
In the first
quarter, ZTE cornered a 9.1 per cent market share in global smartphone
shipments, ranking behind Samsung, Apple, LG Electronics and Huawei
Technologies, research firm IDC said.
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