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Cheap Smartphones Quietly Becoming Popular In the US

Posted by Soulskill on from the apparently-some-people-just-want-phones-to-make-phone-calls dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Bloomberg reports that ZTE and its cheap Android smartphones have been grabbing more and more of the market in the U.S. It's not that the phones are particularly good — it's that they're "good enough" for the $60 price tag. The company has moved up to fourth among smartphone makers, behind Apple, Samsung and LG. That puts them ahead of a lot of companies making premium devices: HTC, Motorola, and BlackBerry, to name a few. ZTE, a Chinese manufacturer, seems to be better at playing the U.S. markets than competitors like Xiaomi and Huawei, and they're getting access to big carriers and big retailers. "Its phone sales are all the more surprising because it's been frozen out of the more lucrative telecom networking market since 2012. That year, the House Intelligence Committee issued a report warning that China's intelligence services could potentially use ZTE's equipment, and those of rival Huawei Technologies, for spying. Huawei then dismissed the allegations as 'little more than an exercise in China bashing.'"

2 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Market share != $$ by danaris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article does mention, toward the end, the common problem all of these low-cost handset makers have: ZTE has expanded its US marketshare by 50%, but only seen its revenue increase by 4%.

    Apple is making plenty of money on smartphones. Samsung is making some money on smartphones. Everyone else is either barely scraping by, or losing money on the category.

    Really makes you wonder why they do it sometimes...and why none of the other smartphone makers even seem to be trying to crack the actually-making-money part of the market.

    Dan Aris

    --
    Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
  2. Not mine by p51d007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've been using a Huawei Ascend Mate2 for almost 18 months. NOT ONE problem. Very little junk added, easy to remove. $300 got me a 6.1" screen, snapdragon 400, 720p screen, 2gb ram, 4,000mAH battery,ext SD card, JB4.3 Laugh all you want at the specs....IF FLIPPIN' FLIES! Most stable smartphone I've ever had. Just updated at the end of June to LL 5.1.1, they skipped KK4.x It goes 3-4 weeks easy without having to reboot to make it "snappy" again, with heavy use, 2-3 days on one battery charge without having to use silly battery "savers". Photos through the 13mp camera are EXCELLENT. Signal (straight talk at&t towers) is as good as any of my previous phones. The size puts some off, but I love the screen. (dell streak 5>galaxy note1>Mate2). This phone turned me off of the locked down, feature stripped, carrier bloated, over priced "flagships" for good!