ZTE goes for No 5 in Thai smartphone market
CHINESE smartphone manufacturer ZTE aims to be one of the top five brands in Thailand next year after launching its Axon series yesterday.
Thailand is the third market to get ZTE’s first global flagship model, following the US and China.
Thailand is a very important market in Southeast Asia, said Jeremy Zhao, chief executive officer for Southeast Asia at ZTE Corporation.
The company plans to spend US$5 million (Bt181 million) on sales and marketing throughout next year in the Thai market.
The company also plans to open up to 20 ZTE smartphone experience shops in Thailand by next quarter and more than 1,500 nationwide next year.
ZTE’s mobile device unit has been in Thailand for 10 years.
“For 16 years, we focused on the operator-based business by offering OEM,” he said, referring to original equipment manufacturing.
ZTE introduced its own smartphone brand in October at only JMart stores, with total shipments reaching 50,000 units.
ZTE hopes to gain 2-3 per cent of the 25-million-unit smartphone market in Thailand next year with shipments of 600,000 units.
“To be a top-five smartphone vendor in Thailand in 2016 means combining the ZTE smartphone brand (600,000 units) and OEM brand (1 million units), which is supplied to operators,” he said.
ZTE offers three smartphone series – Axon, Nubia and Blade – that target the mid-to-high-end market at prices ranging from Bt5,000 to nearly Bt20,000.
The Axon series will be available at the “Thailand Mobile Expo” this week starting a Bt17,900. By year-end, ZTE will have a line-up of 10 smartphone models in the Thai market.
ZTE has 40-50 dealers nationwide and two chain stores – TG and JMart.
It aims to be a top-three player in the global smartphone market by 2020.
It shipped 26 million smart-|phones worldwide in the first quarter and aims for 60 million units for the full year.
According to a report by Counterpoint Technology Market Research, ZTE had 5 per cent of the global smartphone market and ranked fifth after Samsung, Apple, Huawei and Xiaomi.
Axon uses Boeing 787 aircraft-grade material, an aerospace aluminium-magnesium alloy, for its body.
The company claims that Axon is the world’s first smartphone featuring three biometric authentication options – fingerprint, smart voice (command) and “EyePrint ID” iris scan.
