Chinese handset maker ZTE said it could ship 100 million smartphones a year by 2015, Reuters reported on Monday. The company sold 15 million phones in 2011 and is looking to sell upwards of 50 million this year. “As handsets contribute more to overall revenue, it will affect our profit margins,” executive director He Shiyou said. “In 2012, our aim is to increase handset margins.” Following the success of Samsung’s Galaxy Note, ZTE will release two smartphone-tablet hybrids — af...

Samsung’s market share in the Chinese market is three times larger than Apple’s and still growing, Bloomberg reported on Sunday. The Cupertino-based company recently began to sell its flagship smartphone on the nation’s third largest carrier, China Telecom, in addition China Unicom, which up until recently was the exclusive carrier of the iPhone in China. The new partnership, however, may be too little, too late. “I don’t expect Apple to replace Samsung any time soon,” Gartner ...

Sprint on Wednesday announced the “family-friendly” Android-powered ZTE Fury. This entry-level handset features a 3.5-inch capacitive display with a 1GHz single-core processor and Android 2.3 Gingerbread. The Fury is equipped with a 5-megapixel rear camera, a microSD slot, 4GB of internal storage, 512MB of RAM and the usual suite of preloaded Sprint apps. “We realize that there are a lot of choices in the market when it comes to choosing the right cell phone that fits the needs of both a wor...

The unannounced DROID Fighter and LG Lucid 4G, codenamed Cayman, will be coming to Verizon’s 4G LTE network within the coming weeks, according to a a leaked internal document obtained by Droid-Life. According to the photo, the Lucid 4G will launch on March 29th and the DROID Fighter will arrive on April 12th. Information surrounding both devices is rather limited, although it is believed the LG Lucid 4G will be a mid-level handset, not to compete with the flagship LG Spectrum. The HTC Fireball, which is...

Microsoft plans to roll out its Windows Phone “Tango” update for its mobile platform in China some time this year. While the new version of Microsoft’s OS will allow Windows Phones to hit lower price points, Chinese manufacturers are pessimistic about the plan and believe the operating system may not achieve enough success, according to DigiTimes. Android-based smartphones are believed to continue to dominate the Chinese market due to the aggressive marketing of low-end devices from local...

Intel on Monday detailed a number new products and partnerships during the company’s Mobile World Congress press event. “We are very pleased to add new, important customers and capabilities to our phone offerings today. We remain focused on delivering exciting new features and outstanding performance to smartphone customers around the world.” said Intel CEO Paul Otellini. UK service provider Orange will launch an Atom-powered smartphone based on the Z2460 reference design. The device will ...

ZTE doesn’t have a strong presence here in the U.S., but the vendor revealed several smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress trade show that will be big sellers in a number of markets. The Era, Orbit and PF112 are among the new ZTE phones that will launch this year, and we spent some time with each of them on Monday. The Era and the PF112 both run Google’s Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system, while the Orbit is a Windows Phone. The Era is a quad-core Tegra 3-powered be...

ZTE announced a range of new smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, but the star of the show was undoubtedly the company’s new flagship Android phone, the ZTE Era. The Era is a quad-core Tegra 3-powered Android 4.0 phone with a 4.3-inch 960 x 540-pixel qHD display, 8GB of internal storage, HSPA+ and a case that is just 7.8 millimeters thick, which is even thinner than the HTC One S announced on Sunday. ”The numbers speak for themselves. With 50 percent growth in han...

ZTE is looking to make a big splash at next week’s Mobile World Congress, bringing eight new smartphones powered by Android and Windows Phone to the event. The company had previously announced three Android smartphones, the Mimosa X, PF200 and N910. The Mimosa X comes equipped with a NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, a 4.3-inch qHD display, Ice Cream Sandwich, 4GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a front facing camera and a 5-megapixel rear camera. The flagship PF200 will sport an unspecified 1.2GHz chipset...

Global smartphone sales increased 47.3% to 149 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to market research firm Gartner. Total smartphone sales for the full year increased 58% to 472 million units and accounted for 31% of all mobile devices sold. The record sales were led by Apple’s iPhone, which sold 37 million units and helped the company capture a 23.8% market share in the fourth quarter. Apple was also the top smartphone vendor in 2011, with a 19% market share. “Western Europe an...

Sprint on Thursday announced the ZTE Optik Honeycomb tablet. The 7-inch device will be available February 5th for $99.99 with a new two-year agreement, as previously reported. ”ZTE Optik is ZTE’s first tablet in North America and makes the tablet experience available to a new segment of consumers,” said Lixin Cheng, CEO and president of ZTE USA. “Paired with Sprint’s cutting-edge network, ZTE Optik provides an exceptional user experience to consumers who demand affordability, flexibilit...

Thanks to a strong fourth quarter, Apple has passed LG to become the world’s third largest cell phone vendor by volume, according to new estimates from market research firm IDC. The worldwide mobile phone market grew 6.1%  year-over-year in the fourth quarter as the feature phone market continued to decline to its lowest growth rate in two years. Vendors shipped 427.4 million phones in the fourth quarter compared to 402.8 million units in the same quarter last year. Nokia and Samsung remained the top a...

The ZTE Optik Honeycomb-powered Android tablet is coming to Sprint for $99.99 with a two-year agreement, according to documents obtained by SprintFeed. The 7-inch Optik features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor with 16GB of internal storage and 1GB of RAM. The device also contains a microSD slot and a 4,000 mAh battery, but unfortunately it is a 3G-only tablet and does not feature LTE or WiMAX connectivity. With quad-core beginning to hit the market, Sprint will almost certainly be pushing the Optik’s lo...

ZTE on Wednesday launched its budget-friendly Tania Windows Phone in the United Kingdom and at the same time, the company seemingly revealed information regarding the cost of Windows Phone licenses for Microsoft’s vendor partners. To license Windows Phone, a manufacturer pays anywhere from $20 to $30 per device according to ZTE executive Santiago Sierra, who revealed the figures while speaking with TrustedReviews. Manufacturers such as HTC and Samsung were widely believed to pay anywhere from $10 t...