Chinese smartphone maker ZTE on Monday appointed its former president Yin Yimin as the new head for the company’s smartphone business, Chinese newspaper National Business Daily (NBD) reported on Monday.
The NBD report said that Yin will also be the general manager of the company’s mobile devices division, and the former head of smartphone business Zeng Xuezhong will be the execuive vice president and assist Yin.
Yin had been the executive director of ZTE for 19 years. He was president of the company from 2004 to 2010.
ZTE was founded in southern Chinese city of Shenzhen in 1985. Its main businesses include carrier networks, terminals and telecommunication. The smartphone business under its terminals unit has been the company’s most active sector in recent years.
A sour domestic market performance has been the company’s biggest challenge. Its smartphone sales have been highly relying on major network operators in China. So it has been trying to promote its sales via other channels including China’s biggest mobile phone retailer, D.Phone, leading retailers Gome and Suning and China’s second largest e-commerce platform, JD.com.
The company’s official data shows that it shipped 56 million smartphones in 2015, and it aims to sell over 60 million by the end of 2016.
China’s leading smartphone maker Huawei produced 32 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2016 alone. OPPO and vivo have also been rising stars, with successes brought by the companies’ stores and promotion strategies.
Yin still has a lot of work to do to help ZTE win the China market.
(photo taken from Baidu Images)
