14 DAY TRIAL // Chinese handset manufacturer ZTE has great plans for the mobile phone market. According to the company, it is capable of becoming the third maker by shipment volumes within the next four years, joining Nokia and Samsung in top three vendors on the market, and sending South Korean manufacturer LG Electronics on the fourth place.
The mobile phone maker also announced plans to come to the market with handsets powered by Google's Android operating system and by Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform. Windows Mobile is another OS included in the company's plans. Among the future handsets that ZTE will push to the market, we can count five phones running under the Android platform, including the ‘Blade’ and ‘Racer’ devices that were detailed previously, a recent article on Mobile News unveils. ZTE has been on an ascending route lately, and it plans on keeping the momentum. The company aims at shipping a number of 80 million devices in 2010, including phones and data cards. During 2009, one third of its shipments were comprised of data cards. As for the future, the handset vendor says that it should be able to ship a number of 100 million phones and data cards next year, and that it aims at bringing LG down by 2015. Currently, ZTE is getting close to becoming the fifth phone maker in the world, taking that place from Motorola.
Zhang Xiaohong, vice president of ZTE’s handset product system business, said, “[i]n the past years, we have grown sales at a steady rate. Our ability to customise devices makes us a good partner for operators looking to differentiate themselves in certain market segments. Our after-sales support for partners is also excellent. Our infrastructure work makes us very familiar to them already as well, and gives us experience of systems and core technology. We will continue to release devices under operator-brands in Europe, and will increase the number of products on which we share some branding. Own-branded devices will come further down the line.”