Chinese phone maker ZTE is making giant strides in the sales rankings of international markets. So much so that, despite the tense diplomatic relations between the United States and China, the latest news assures that the Asian brand has already risen to fourth place in sales of telephony and to third place in sales of Android smartphones in the American country.
It is a dizzying climb. From not having in 2010, a little over 5 years ago, with no presence in the United States, ZTE has now had 7 ”™ 5% of smartphones in the country distributed among American consumers in the third quarter of last year, only surpassed by its main competitors, Apple, Samsung and LG.
In fact, a few weeks ago, the Chinese company presented its balance sheet for 2015, by which ZTE would have sold more than 100 million devices in the past year, a growth of 43% in its profits and 23% in total revenue. In addition to the American territory, the European and Japanese markets are also being key in its progression, and the company will try to make the leap in 2016 to the Top 3 of phone manufacturers, a list led by Apple and Samsung, and in which Huawei has been cast very recently in third place.
The success of ZTE in the United States, as has already happened with other Chinese manufacturers (see the case of Huawei in our country, not to go too far), it seems that it lies in being able to launch devices with a worked design and performance very respectable, but at very competitive prices.
Its niche so far is that of beautiful and, above all, cheap phones. However, it seems that the medium-term strategy will be to try to position itself in the United States as a manufacturer of increasingly premium devices, and to alternate a catalog of affordable models as before, with new high-end models at higher prices.
Precisely, ZTE has deposited its efforts in the ZTE Axon. It is a family of high-end terminals of which we already have experience in Spain with the ZTE Axon Elite model, and whose portfolio has been expanded a few weeks ago in the Asian market with the ZTE Axon Max, a smartphone that for now does not it is available in Europe.
Competing premium range, ZTE also has the Nubian Z9, a smartphone powerful with Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor eight cores and 3 or 4GB of RAM, depending on the selected version, rear camera 16 megapixels and screen without side frames 5 ”™ 2 inches.
In the United States, both Huawei and ZTE came to the fore in 2012 not because of the quality of their smartphones, but because they were accused by the House Intelligence Committee of espionage on behalf of the Chinese authorities. The American organisms recommended to the distributors to look for alternative providers of telephony. But it seems that Asian companies have put all the meat on the grill and they are getting stronger in the US. We'll see what 2016 holds.
