ZTE: competitors miss the mark with expensive smartphones
updated 05:33 pm EDT, Fri July 20, 2012
ZTE targets less cutting edge tech to cut prices
Chinese device maker ZTE believes that its competitors are spending too much time trying to develop the next cutting edge handset and too little time developing devices that can sell at a price point attractive to consumers. This according to ZTE's European marketing and business development director Chris Edwards, who PC Pro reports spoke at a launch event for the company's new Grand X smartphone. ZTE is attempting to carve out a niche for itself in the low to mid-range market, and it believes its competitors are going about addressing that market in entirely the wrong fashion.
Edwards contended that Samsung, HTC, and other manufacturers were using price erosion and aging handsets in order to provide phones at mid-range prices, as opposed to designing phones directly for the mid-range sector. ZTE is basing decisions, he said, on the belief that a majority of people want good-quality, high-spec devices, but not necessarily devices featuring cutting edge technology that pushes up the price point. Higher-specced phones, Edwards holds, are impressive but outside the reach of most consumers.
ZTE's concentration on the mid-level market relies making compromises in hardware choices; the company uses Nvidia's Tegra 2 chipset instead of Tegra 3, for example. The company hopes that, by designing devices in such a manner, it can open up and occupy a gap in the crowded smartphone market. At the same time, ZTE is not ruling out developing higher-end smartphones, though Edwards gave no details on any new phones in the offing.
