After announcing the ZTE Blade V7 and V7 Lite smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer revealed that it’s planning to sell somewhere in the range of 60 and 70 million of its mobile devices this year. During an interview conducted earlier today in Barcelona, the ZTE Senior Director of Mobile Devices Waiman Lam said that 60 million is the conservative target for his company in 2016 while its most optimistic predictions go up to 70 million of sold units. In other words, ZTE is expecting that it will achieve a sales boost amounting to between 7 and 20 percent in comparison to 2015.
In addition to that, even though neither the aforementioned Blade V7 nor the V7 Lite has gotten its official price tag yet, Lam revealed that the former will cost around €250, or just under $280 while the latter will be in the range between 150 and 200 euros. That sounds about right given the general value-oriented design philosophy behind these devices, and there’s no doubt that official confirmation will be coming soon as Blade V7 Lite and V7 are scheduled for release this spring and summer, respectively.
Apart from talking sales targets, ZTE used the latest edition of Mobile World Congress as an opportunity to announce the fact that it’s starting to put (more of) its money where its mouth is regarding the brand-building plans it talked about last year. More specifically, the Chinese company revealed its new sports marketing partnership with Seville, a soccer club competing in the top tier of Spanish soccer, La Liga.
All in all, exciting times are ahead for the currently fourth largest smartphone manufacturer in the US and sixth largest worldwide, as in addition to the aforementioned mid-range smartphones and a new sponsorship, it’s yet to announce the successor to its ZTE Axon Pro flagship phablet which launched last August. As for when that could happen, one can only make an educated guess. Munich will host MobileTech Conference Spring next month, and there’s also the M2M World Congress 2016 happening in London in April, though if the company sticks to its release schedule, it’s likely that Axon Pro 2 or whatever it’s going to be called could simply drop out of the blue this summer. So again, exciting times are definitely ahead.