ZTE Shipments of Mobile Phones Reached 17.1mn Q4 2011
Feb 06, 2012 (SinoCast Daily Business Beat via COMTEX) -- Mobile phone shipments of communications device provider ZTE Corporation (ZTE; SZSE: 000063 and SEHK: 0763) reached 17.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2011, occupying 4% market share.
According to recent report by the IDC, ZTE ranked fifth in global mobile market in terms of shipments and was only 0.1% lower than Korea-based LG Electronics as of the fourth quarter of last year. In the fourth quarter of 2011, LG Electronics shipped 17.7 million mobile phones, taking up 4.1% market share.
ZTE made its fortune through customizing mobile phones for telecom operators and mainly sold functional phones of low price in emerging markets previously. The company, however, turned to foray into more profitable smart phone market at present. The smart phones produced by ZTE mainly adopt Google's Android operating system (OS). However, a Microsoft Windows OS-based smart phone model was also launched by the company in recent days.
The gap between ZTE and LG Electronics is narrowing gradually since the shipments of LG smart phones are reducing substantially year on year. However, during the fourth quarter of 2010, LG Electronics still occupied 7.6% of the market by shipping 30.6 million mobile phones in the period, whose shipments were almost two times as that of ZTE. IDC report suggests that Nokia, Samsung and Apple ranked top three in global mobile phone market in the fourth quarter of last year, taking up 26.6%, 22.8% and 8.7% market share, respectively.