In the wake of the company’s $1.2B settlement deal with the US Commerce Department, ZTE has elected to promote North America mobile devices business unit president Cheng Lixin to head the company’s mobile division as a whole.
After pushing the company’s US market-share to 11.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016, Cheng will now manage ZTE’s mobile affairs globally.
In their most recent earnings report, the company claimed a 27.8% increase in net profits and a 17.8% improvement to revenues. It’s a quick bounce-back for a company that incurred a net loss in the preceding quarter as a result of the substantial fines levied against it over violating US trade sanction laws.
ZTE have previously insisted that, without the financial penalties, they would have brought in a hefty 20% improvement on the previous year’s net profit.
In their most-recent annual report, ZTE has claim to be the third largest smartphone vendor in Australia. Though to be fair, that’s a claim that they share with more than a few of their competitors so it’s difficult to know for sure.
ChannelNews also recently reviewed the company’s Axon 7 smartphone and found that “When all is said and done, the ZTE Axon 7 is a fairly inoffensive phone that’s simulatenously (and oddly) difficult to recommend. Technically, it hits a lot of the right marks but at the same time it’s all a little flavorless.”
