Lenovo shoots for the stars in smartphones

Chinese firms on move

China has surpassed the US to become the world's biggest smartphone market. According to Canalys, smartphone shipment in China reached 88 million in the second quarter, accounting for one-third of all shipments worldwide.

Boasting a huge smartphone market volume, together with the largest mobile population, China will naturally become a hotbed of mobile phone innovation and production.

Although they're not household names such as Samsung and Apple, many Chinese handset makers have successfully made their way into the top 10 globally, thanks to high-volume shipments of low- to mid-end mobile phones.

Shenzhen-based Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and ZTE Corp, traditionally known as telecom equipment giants that compete with rivals such as Sweden-based Ericsson, now hope to found smartphone empires.

Huawei's and ZTE's overseas expansion into the mobile phone business came much earlier than that of Lenovo.

By building telecom networks for carriers worldwide, Huawei and ZTE formed good relationships with local operators and managed to make inroads in many markets by using those operators' distribution networks. Now, Huawei and ZTE mobile phones are a common sight in many emerging countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Those two Chinese companies have already extended their reach to more mature and profitable markets, such as North America and Europe.

ZTE established a North American business group earlier this year, which will report directly to its core management.

ZTE was the fourth-largest mobile phone vendor in the US by shipments in the second quarter, with a market share of 6.2 percent, behind Samsung, Apple and LG, according to research firm ITG.

All of the major US telecom carriers, including Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and T-Mobile International AG, have cooperated with ZTE in selling its handsets, said He Shiyou, executive vice-president of ZTE.

It wasn't easy to reach that stage, He said, noting that ZTE didn't even crack the top 10 in the US mobile phone supplier market two years ago.

Huawei expects to ship 60 million smartphones worldwide this year, which would be almost double last year's 32 million units.

Although Huawei has faced hurdles in its telecom equipment business in the US because of national security concerns there, Richard Yu, chairman of Huawei Consumer Business Group, said Huawei is still committed to the US smartphone market.

"As time goes by, more consumers will trust Huawei," Yu said in a television interview.