The world’s fifth largest handset maker by market share ZTE plans to move aggressively on US market. Lixin Cheng, the head of ZTE’s North American business, explained for The Wall Street Journal that his company intends not only to introduce high end smartphones on the US market but also to make this part of the world ZTE’s largest market by 2015.
ZTE is a successful manufacturer of mobile devices and telecommunications equipment but the company has little if none brand awareness on a global scale. This is a result of years of “white labeling”, which is a habit of making handsets for other brands, labeled with other logos, usually ZTE made such phones for carriers. However, lately ZTE logo appears more and more on the packages, as a sign that the company plans to improve its brand awareness among consumers.
ZTE hopes to follow HTC’s strategy, a manufacturer that also produced white label smartphones before becoming a success. IN order to approach the US market, ZTE officials opened negotiations with carriers with the proposal of making smartphones powered by Google’s Android or Microsoft’s Windows Phone.