ZTE has specific plans to expand its presence in the UK, France, Italy and Turkey
Chinese vendor ZTE expects sales of mobile devices in the European market to reach approximately 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in three years, Yijing Fan, ZTE Spain’s terminals director, told reporters during a press conference in Madrid.
The executive said that mobile phone sales in Europe will reach approximately 3.1 billion yuan this year.
The vendor is currently focusing on sales to the retail segment, Fan said, and once this segment is fully consolidated it will also focus on growth in sales through carriers. “Our idea is to continue gaining market share and continue to work to build the brand in Europe,” she said. The Chinese company is currently sponsoring football teams in Spain and Germany in a move to expand its brand awareness in those markets.
Fan said that ZTE plans to focus on additional European markets next year as it has a consolidated position in markets such as Spain and Germany, which are currently the two largest markets for ZTE in terms of market share position. “These two markets account for approximately 30% of our overall revenue in the European market,” she added.
“As an initial step, we invested resources in Spain and Germany. After these two key markets, we will invest in other large European markets such as the U.K. and France.” She said that other markets in which the vendor will put resources to expand its market share will be Italy and Turkey.
In Europe, ZTE has a design facility in Germany.
In related news, ZTE unveiled its Axon 7 Mini smartphone during the IFA 2016 trade show in Berlin.
The Axon 7 mini will be initially available in the U.S., Russia, Germany, Spain, Poland, Japan, Australia, India and Saudi Arabia.
The new device features a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with 1080×1920 pixel resolution. The Axon Mini runs on the Android 6.0 Marshmallow platform and is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. The smartphone offers 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage expandable up to 128 GB with an external microSD card.
