According to figures from industry analysts IDC, the budget mobile manufacturer ZTE has overtaken Apple in terms of the number of products shipped annually, having sold 12 million phones in 2011. It now represents five per cent of the smartphone market all by itself, and has big plans for the future…
The number suggest that the China-based ZTE has crawled up to its current market share by doubling the number of shipped products quart-on-quarter in the dying throws of 2011. It’s expected to increase that by 60 per cent this year. It helps to be operating in the world’s most populated country.
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But ZTE’s business is already leaving the safety of its homeland. Budget ZTE handsets such as the Orange Monte Carlo are out in the UK and US now, and the plan is to expand massively over the next coming years.
ZTE has plans to overtake everyone and swallow up the western smartphone market by 2015, starting with a full-on assault on the US.
It’s a bold ambition, but with the kind of numbers it’s turning over in China giving it such huge turnover, ZTE could be the mobile maker to beat in the next decade.
