What does Chinese smartphone manufacturer ZTE and NBA team Houston Rockets have in common? Well, ZTE’s products. ZTE and Houston Rockets have partnered up last year, ZTE was the official smartphone provider for this NBA team. Rockets got a new sponsor and ZTE got the exposure it needs in the US, considering they wanted to raise brand awareness over there. It seems like that partnership is about to continue considering the NBA paid a visit to ZTE in China.
Houston Rockets came to ZTE’s R&D center in Shanghai. Rockets’ CEO Tad Brown was the one leading the team to Shanghai along with the team’s vice president, John Croley. Club’s retired star Clyde Drexler and their current point guard Patrick Beverley were also amongst the attendees. Patrick Beverley took some photos with ZTE employees which you can check out below the article. Tad Brown and had a meeting with ZTE’s leadership of course and this was a nice marketing stunt as well. ZTE will once again create customized products for Houston based NBA team as part of this sponsorship. We didn’t get any in-depth specifics of that meeting of course, only the general information.
It seems ZTE was able to raise brand awareness thanks to this partnership which is over a year long at this point. This Chinese manufacturer is well-known in China and some other parts of the world, though mainly because mainly because of their low and mid-range devices. They might decide to change that in the future and will push some high-end devices around. This visit to China might actually have something to do with ZTE’s event which is being held tomorrow in New York. We’ll find out more about ZTE’s US plans, at this point I really have no clue what ZTE is planning. They might introduce one of the three devices the company unveiled at IFA, this time for US market. These are low-mid range devices though, I believe ZTE has other plans and will turn to the high-end device(s) for this unveiling and perhaps we’ll even see some customized products for Houston Rockets, we’ll find out soon enough.