ZTE, one of China’s biggest telecom and mobile phone makers, plans to sell five new smartphones directly to India. This is the first time ZTE has marketed phones specifically for the Indian market. The five phones are priced from US$105 to US$270 according to The Next Web.
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ZTE is in it to win it, and will market, distribute and manage all sales of the mystery smartphones. It’s even going to ensure that post-sale customer service. ZTE has lofty goals in India, and wants to be one of the top three telecoms by 2016, says Xu Dejun, CEO of ZTE India. This previous weekend, Xu announced that ZTE is “reevaluating its India’s telecom market and wants to shift focus to smartphones.” According to China Daily, 10% of all ZTE sales are smartphones and over the course of these difficult three years, Xu wants ZTE’s India smartphone share to grow to thirty percent. To achieve this goal, ZTE’s partnered withCalyx Telecommunications to distribute the five new phones. Growth comes through “localization” according to Xu.
“We want ZTE India to be an Indian company, not the Indian branch of a Chinese company.” ZTE, with over 23 offices throughout India posted a profit of US$700-million in 2012, which is practically half of the US$1.5-billion it made in 2009.
Phone me
There’s no word on which phones are available yet, but ZTE has dozens of devices that fit the price range. Let’s have a look at ZTE’s range of phones from US$105 to US$300 – there’s a great chance that the five phones may be based on some of these models (all details taken from Amazon):
- ZTE V987 (US$300)
- Anthem 4G (US$199)
- V970 Grand X (US$220)
- Blade II (US$119)
- ZTE Warp (US$149)
