ZTE presents 15 new devices, including LTE tablets and smartphones

Chinese vendor shares its ambition to be world's third largest handset maker by 2015.ZTE unveiled 15 new devices at Mobile World Congress on Monday, all of which will be commercially available in or before the fourth quarter of 2012.The plethora of new devices forms part of ZTE's bid to boost its worldwide market share. The Chinese equipment maker became the fourth largest handset vendor in the world by shipments in 2011 and aims to reach the number three spot in 2015.″Our long-term goal for the terminals division is to achieve a compound growth rate of above 40% per year for five consecutive years from 2010, and to become one of the top three vendors in the global handset market by 2015,” said He Shiyou, head of the terminals division at ZTE. “We will continue our long-standing cooperation with operators around the world, but we will also continue to build our distributor channels (both ODM and OEM),″ he added, noting that the company will focus its marketing on the high-end markets of Europe, America and Japan in particular.″Revenue from international business is now over 60% of ZTE´s terminal revenues,” He said, adding that ZTE last year saw terminal shipments grow by 50%, and smartphone shipments by 400%.As part of this aggressive growth strategy, ZTE on Monday unveiled nine smartphones and six tablets.Two of the smartphones and three of the tablets will be LTE-capable. Its two LTE dual-core handsets, the N91 and PF200, are due to be released in Q4. ZTE's LTE tablets comprise two 1.2 GHz dual-core slabs, the V6 and the V8, and their larger 1.7 GHz sibling, the V96. And following in the footsteps of earlier MWC announcements in the quad-core space from Huawei and HTC, ZTE also unveiled two 1.5 GHz quad-core tablets, the T98 and the PF 100.However, the main focus of ZTE's presentation was on the ZTE Era, a 1.3 GHz quad-core smartphone running Ice Cream Sandwich. The Era is expected to be launched in Europe and China in the second half of 2012.Meanwhile, ZTE built on its Windows Phone offering with the Orbit, which also features near field communication (NFC) technology.Finally, there were questions raised over the quality of ZTE's software interface and how it differs from the standard Android OS, particularly since the vendor was touting features such as the calculator as unique selling points. However, “ZTE will establish a unique user interface,″ insisted Fan Jiongyi, the company's vice president of European terminals.Read Online for More Information