ZTE to become the world’s fifth largest handset maker?
Last time we checked, the world’s first five handset manufacturers were Nokia, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola.
But this above is the top for the fourth quarter of 2008, and 2009 might bring a new phone maker into the spotlight. That’s ZTE, one of China’s largest telecommunications equipment makers.
DigiTimes quotes “market observers in Taiwan” who say ZTE has shipped 45 million phones last year, and is likely to enter the top 5 handset makers during 2009.
If the Chinese company indeed reached the top five, it’s either Motorola or Sony Ericsson the manufacturer that’ll fall on the sixth place (in Q4 2008, they shipped 19.2 and 24.2 million phones, respectively).
(this is T7 – one of ZTE’s handsets made for Australia’s Telstra)
ZTE currently has lots of agreements with various carriers around the world, including Vodafone, T-Mobile, Hutchison’s 3 and Telstra. It mainly offers entry-level phones, but it also has Windows Mobile and touchscreen devices.
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