ZTE is a pretty well-known brand in China but it’s not exactly a household name outside of the People’s Republic. The company is looking to fix that to an extent this year by setting up 23 retail stores across Europe and China. It’s going to use the stores to drive smartphone sales. The new locations will be spread across China and Europe, even Russia and Mexico have made the list.
The company was sixth in terms of global smartphone shipments in the previous quarter and it shipped a total of 53 million units last year. It’s looking to ship at least 70 million units this year.
Retail stores have proven to be very lucrative for the smartphone business of some companies, look no further than Apple, ZTE is basically going with the same idea by trying to promote its smartphones through a retail experience that it controls from start to finish.
The stores will enable ZTE to lift brand awareness while increasing sales in the markets it values the most. The company recently announced its flagship Axon 7 smartphone. It’s a flagship with specifications like the Snapdragon 820 processor, 6GB RAM, Quad HD AMOLED display, and it even happens to be among the very first smartphone to have support for Google’s Daydream VR platform.
ZTE Axon 7 will be released in the U.S. later this month, however, the company currently has no plans to open up a retail store in these United States.
Filed in . Read more about Daydream and ZTE. Source: bloomberg