By Telecom Lead Team: ZTE and Huawei have reported
significant increase in mobile phone sales in the fourth quarter of 2011.
ZTE has sold 56.9 million handsets in 2011, while Huawei
Technologies sold 40.7 million devices.
With these figures ZTE becomes the world’s fifth largest
mobile phone vendor. The firm posted a 71 percent increase in sales of
smartphones. In 2011 as a whole, ZTE had a global market share of 3.2 percent.
ZTE’s market share in 2010 was 1.9 percent.
Huawei moved into eighth place worldwide, according to
analysts Gartner Inc. Also, the firm moved ahead of LG in the Android marketplace
to become one of the top four Android manufacturers worldwide.
Huawei has made significant progress in moving to its
own-branded devices, and has continued to expand its portfolio into higher
tiers as its tries to build more iconic products, the report said.
ZTE and Huawei were the fastest-growing vendors in the
fourth quarter of 2011, behind only Apple Inc. These vendors (ZTE and Huawei)
expanded their market reach and kept on improving the user experience of their
Android devices,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at
Gartner.
The two Shenzhen firms had expressed their ambition to
explore new business fields, such as mobile phone production, in addition to
their traditional telecom hardware business.
Recently,
Forbes said telecoms superstars Huawei and ZTE continue to send out new signals
underscoring how serious they are about developing their cellphone business, as
both realize that growth potential could be severely limited for their
traditional networking equipment business.
Huawei Technologies shipped 20 million
smartphones globally in 2011, a fivefold increase. It recorded sales of
$6.8 billion from its consumer business last year, which includes devices such
as mobile phones and tablet PCs. That was more than 40 percent higher than $4.8
billion in 2010.
ZTE said sales of its smartphones will double this year as
it gains market share in Europe, North America, Brazil and Japan. It added
that sales of the handsets rose fivefold to more than 12 million units last
year.
According to a report by Gartner, mobile device sales to
end users totaled 1.8 billion in 2011, an 11.1 percent increase from 2010.
