WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.
2012: Huawei and ZTE to ship nearly 100 million smartphones for 15% global share target.
Huawei Device and ZTE, two China-based vendors, will together ship 95-100 million smartphones for a combined global market share of 15% in 2012, according to Taiwan-based makers of handset components.
Huawei shipped 16 million smartphones to rank globally 9th and ZTE 11 million for 10th place in 2011, the sources cited Gartner statistics as indicating. Huawei and ZTE have set internal shipment targets of 60 million and 35-40 million smartphones respectively for 2012.
Huawei and ZTE have produced Android handsets for own-brand sale and on a customization basis through cooperation with mobile telecom carriers in the recent two years.
The two vendors initially lunched smartphones for sale at low to medium prices and began to make a foray into market segments of medium- to high-level smartphones in the second half of 2011.
In 2012, Huawei and ZTE will launch smartphones equipped with quad-core processors, LTE (Long Term Evolution) functionality and large screens of over 4.5 inches as well as Windows Phone-based models.
China-based hqew.com forecasts that Huawei and ZTE will ship 57 million smartphones and 37 million ones respectively in 2012, while China-based vendors TCL Communication Technology, GiONEE, Coolpad and Lenovo will each ship more than 10 million units.