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...

Phone maker ZTE recently said that it sees the United States and China as the two largest markets for smartphone sales growth. “The United States and China will be key engines driving our smartphone sales,” ZTE’s head of handset strategy Lv Qianhao, told Reuters in a recent interview, noting that the company expects its worldwide smartphone shipments to double in 2012 and to increase by 30% to 40% annually through 2015. ZTE mostly sells Android-powered smartphones but said it plans to launc...

At the Consumer Electronics Show, Verizon Wireless and Motorola announced the much-anticipated DROID 4, the fourth installment of Verizon’s original flagship device. The DROID 4 comes in at only half an inch thick and includes the expected 5-row keyboard with a 4-inch qHD display. The device features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity, 16GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, and an 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 1080p video. The DROID 4 will be released with Android...

Handset makers in China have formed an alliance to prepare for possible patent battles with Apple, Microsoft and Nokia. Coolpad, Konka, TCL, ZTE and Lenovo were among the companies named in a report by DigiTimes on Friday. The number of lawsuits filed in China is expected to increase as Microsoft, Nokia and Apple try to increase market share there, the report says. Nokia has already filed patent infringement suits against several Chinese phone makers and Microsoft has gone after Huawei to try to secure a p...

Global cell phone shipments grew 14% annually to reach 390 million units in the third quarter as China-based ZTE passed Apple to become the No. 4 cell phone vendor in the world by volume. Market research and consulting firm Strategy Analytics on Thursday released global mobile phone shipment data for the third quarter of 2011, and the landscape is shifting. Nokia remained atop the list, having shipped 106.6 million cell phones in the September quarter, and Samsung remained in the No. 2 spot as mobile phone sh...

Microsoft will begin rolling out Windows Phone 7.5 “Mango” to last year’s Windows Phone lineup beginning September 1st, Pocket-lint reports. The British tech blog cites multiple trusted sources with its report, and it says September 1st will also mark the start of device announcements touting Microsoft’s Mango OS. The date just one day ahead of this year’s IFA trade show in Berlin, where Pocket-lint says Microsoft may have Windows Phone 7.5-powered devices on display alongside ...

Gartner on Thursday issued its global mobile phone sales data for the second quarter, which shows that the industry grew 16.5% from the same quarter last year, to 428.7 million units. Smartphone sales jumped 74% year-on-year, with 107.7 million smartphones having been sold to end users around the world. “Smartphone sales continued to rise at the expense of feature phones,” said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “Consumers in mature markets are choosing ent...

Microsoft confirmed on its Windows Team Blog on Monday that it has released the RTM build of Windows Phone “Mango” to manufacturing partners. “This marks the point in the development process where we hand code to our handset and mobile operator partners to optimize Mango for their specific phone and network configurations,” explained Microsoft’s Windows Phone corporate vice president Terry Myerson. Microsoft has said Mango will deliver more than 500 new features to the Windows P...

Microsoft’s final build of Windows Phone Mango has been rubber stamped and released to manufacturers and wireless carriers according to Windows Phone Dev Podcast. The move is among the final steps before Microsoft delivers the Mango release to customers. The most recent reports have suggested that Microsoft will update current Windows Phone devices in September, although winrumors says the update could be pushed out as soon as August. Microsoft’s Windows Phone partners include HTC, LG, Samsung, De...

Microsoft showed off a number of new Windows Phone “Mango” devices during a Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference presentation on Tuesday. The unnamed devices were on stage during a Microsoft presentation, and were handled very briefly so the audience could get a quick look at them. Acer’s first Windows Phone was the first device to be displayed, followed by a pink waterproof offering from Fujitsu. ZTE also had a device on stage, but all eyes were locked on a Galaxy S II-like device from Sa...

Earlier this week T-Mobile announced the Rocket 3.0, a new USB data stick built by ZTE that’s capable of running on T-Mobile’s new upgraded 42Mbps HSPA+ 4G network. As our luck would have it, the friendly FedEx guy just dropped off the Rocket 3.0. T-Mobile’s newly upgraded 42Mbps network is available in new markets 55 markets, as well as in New York City, Orlando, and Las Vegas. In our office we averaged 1.17Mbps on the downlink, and 1.07Mbps on the uplink. That’s slow, and in New Yor...