ZTE Corp has been under tremendous pressure this last year on account of tough competition from the Korean manufacturer Samsung as well as the ubiquitous Apple Inc. ZTE Corp, a Chinese mobile devices manufacturing major based out (and listed at) Shenzhen, aims to remedy sales by targeting a sales figure of 60 million devices for this year, as it tries to grab more share of the highly competitive mobile devices market.
Zhang Renjun, Senior Vice President, ZTE Corp informed reporters at a company event on Thursday, that for last year, the company had sold close to 40 million devices globally. Their ambitious target of 60 million global sales for 2014 is definitely an aggressive target, however, the company is not left with many options.
ZTE receives tough competition from its next-door neighbor – Huawei Technologies Co. – in the telecom equipment and devices segment – both at their home base as well as in global markets. However, ZTE’s share of the more than 1 billion subscribers’ Chinese market is aggressively being eaten up by Samsung, Apple, Huawei and new entrant, Xiaomi. According to third quarter data from IDC and Gartner researchers, ZTE has fallen off the list of top five global vendors last year.
If the recently concluded CES is anything to go by, ZTE has big plans for 2014 which include a wearable device and quite a few pocketables as well. At CES, ZTE had unveiled their flagship phablet – the ZTE Grand S II which is rumored to offer a 5.5 inch 1080p screen and a Snapdragon 800 chipset. The smartphones unveiled ranged from the 4 inch screen toting ZTE Sonata 4G (for Aio Wireless) and the ZTE Nubia series (the 5 inch screen toting ZTE Nubia 5 S, as well as the 4.7 inch screen ZTE Nubia 5S mini). Click here to read more on these offerings from ZTE.
The Chinese manufacturer had also unveiled another phablet – the ZTE Iconic Phablet, which boasts of a 5.7 inch screen with a presumably 720p display as well as a smart watch – the ZTE Bluewatch, which hooks up to a smartphone via Bluetooth and can control calls, display Facebook and Twitter updates.
So far ZTE has not managed to strike big gold with their device offerings, only time will tell whether things would get better for them this year. Do you think ZTE would meet this tough target? Let us know in the comments below.