ZTE hopes to join Samsung as a top tier manufacturer

You’re forgiven if you read the headline and chuckled a bit, since ZTE phones have been traditionally laughed at as the budget option you’ll find carriers giving away to get people hooked into contracts. While that might still be true on the budget end of things, ZTE’s most recent efforts with the ZTE Axon 7, ZTE Blade V8 Pro, and the recently announced ZTE Nubia Z17 confirm the company is committed to more than just cheap hardware.

In a new interview with CNBC, ZTE’s CEO Lixin Cheng said that his brand is focusing on innovation and delivering products that consumers want. Cheng says his company will move faster than anyone expects, but a quick survey of IDC sales data reveals that ZTE hasn’t cracked the top five list of manufacturers when it comes to market share. In fact, ZTE only ranks as the eighth-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.

I can’t speak to how well ZTE will be at committing to their strategy of capturing consumer attention by listening to them, but ZTE has been pretty speedy with updates to the Axon 7, which I’ve been using as my daily driver since October. I’m happily looking forward to seeing what the company can do in the future, as they’ve previously hinted at wanting to satisfy the Nexus crowd that enjoys a stock Android experience.