Huawei and ZTE want to ship 100 million smartphones in 2012

4:17 AM    




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Huawei and ZTE, two very popular manufacturers in their own Chinese market, have been relative unknown in the world smartphone arena, until the beginning of this year. After some impressive demonstrations at this year’s Mobile World Congress, both companies are hoping to back up the “talk” with equally impressive sales figures. More precisely, Huawei and ZTE plan to ship a combined 100 million smartphones this year.

This is a huge jump in their shipping targets from 2011, with a shift from 16 million to 60 million for Huawei, and from 11 million to 40 million for ZTE. In the process, the two Chinese giants hope to capture a combined 15% of the world handset market. This large jump in projected volumes can be attributed to the fact that both companies have shifted their attention to the higher end  of the smartphone spectrum, while previously being known only for manufacturing low- to mid-range devices.
Huawei and ZTE have both announced very promising high-end devices this year, and, if they can offer these devices at affordable prices, they may emerge as major competitors to HTC, Samsung, or Motorola. Here’s what they have in store for this year.


Huawei’s high-end devices, the Ascend D Quad and Ascend D Quad  XL (which the Chinese proclaimed “the fastest smartphone in the world”) feature impressive specifications such as:
 K3V2 quad-core 1.2 Ghz processor/1.5 Ghz (for D Quad XL)
  • Android 4.0
  •  4.5″ capacitive touch screen
  • 1280×720 resolution
  • 1800mAH battery/2500mAH (for D Quad XL)
  • 8GB internal memory, expandable my microSD
  • 8MP rear camera, 1.3MP camera
If the specs aren’t impressive enough, Huawei has also promised that both devices will be 20% to 50% cheaper than other similar phones.

Along the same lines, ZTE announced their own quad-core smartphone at MWC 2012, the ZTE Era, which it dubbed “the quad-core phone for the budget conscious.” ZTE Era specifications include:
  • NVIDIA Quad Core Tegra 3 processor, 1.3 Ghz
  • 4.3″ qHD capacitive touch screen
  • 960×540 resolution
  • Android 4.0
  • 8MP rear camera, 1.3MP front camera
  • 8GB internal storage, expandable via MiscroSD
The specs are a bit of a letdown compared to the other quad-core devices, but the lower specs will likely translate into a much lesser strain on the wallet. ZTE also announced plans to release up to four different Android 4.0 tablets, featuring both dual-core and quad-core processors.
With these devices leading the charge and accompanied by a slew of other devices, the lofty sales expectations announced by the two ambitious Chinese companies seem to be within reach. We’ve seen Huawei and ZTE “talk the talk”, now it’s time for them to “walk the walk.”
What are your thoughts? After the big splash Huawei and ZTE made at MWC, are they going to meet their expectations?