China’s ZTE eyes Kenya’s smartphone market

By MARGARET KANINI

NAIROBI, KENYA: Smartphone market in Kenya continues to grow as Chinese owned Telecommunications equipment and network provider Wednesday launched eight mobile devices, including smartphones.

ZTE Corporation brought into the market China’s leading range of smartphones, which include the Nubian mini, ZTE bladeL2, and blade c2 plus, among others. This new variety of smartphones is expected to grow the local smartphone market, currently estimated at over 50 per cent.

The telecoms giant was last year ranked the third leading provider of smartphones in the world (after Apple and Samsung) after shipping a total of 13.6 million handsets to their global market. “We are very positive that our range of smartphones will explode in the Kenyan market.

Two thirds of every handset device sold in Kenya is a smartphone, this only means that Kenyans adopt very easily to smartphones, Mark Jin, ZTE’s sales director (terminal products) for Kenya and Somalia region said during the launch.

Jin said that their competitors, who also provide a range of products to the Kenyan market, have an upper hand against them because of the variety of and constant supply of smart phones to the Kenyan market. He said ZTE has therefore decided to join the trend and has promised to fight hard to stay relevant.