ZTE got the honor on Tuesday of unveiling the world’s first phone with an under-display camera. The Axon 20 5G doesn’t need a notch like the iPhone, nor Samsung’s unsightly hole-punch camera. It can take selfies right through the screen.
The Democratic National Committee has a solution for improving its smartphone security: switch to iPhone. It suggests that Democratic organizations get rid of all their Android devices.
This is especially true if the phones are from ZTE, a company with ties to the Chinese government.
By law, anyone who works for the U.S. government must give up their phone if it was made by Huawei or ZTE. And federal agencies must get rid of routers and other networking equipment made by the two Chinese companies as well. This is a requirement in the Defence Authorization Act just passed by Congress.
The rule came because both Huawei and ZTE are considered to be too closely tied to the Chinese government to be trusted.
Forget Comcast, ZTE takes the cake with the most blatant Apple-ripoff-of-the-month award. The Chinese company’s latest handset, the Blade S6, is clearly… inspired by the iPhone.
While it doesn’t have the identical chamfered edges of Samsung’s upcoming phone, it does copy the most iconic part of every Apple product.
Android rules the worldwide smartphone market when it comes to market share, and its dominance in China could have a lot to do with that. At the end of the first quarter of 2013, Google’s platform claimed a whopping 51.4% share of all smartphones owned in China.
Android doesn’t look like it’s about to lose any of its market share to competing platforms any time soon. During the first quarter of 2013, Google’s platform powered a whipping 59.9% of all smart mobile devices sold as total shipments hit 308.7 million units.
Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, was installed on just 19.3% of devices — despite the success of its iPhones and iPads.
While smartphone have really taken off since Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007, believe it or not, traditional feature phones have remained the biggest sellers worldwide. That was until the first quarter of 2013, when smartphones out-shipped feature phones for the first time ever.
Of the 418.6 million cellphones sold during the first three months of the year, 51.6% of them were smartphones, according to new figures from IDC.
Cult of Android will soon be on its way to Barcelona for this year’s Mobile World Congress — which kicks off Sunday, February 24 — where we’re expecting a whole host of announcements regarding new smartphones, tablets, apps, and accessories. More than 65,000 people will attend the event, and they’re all there for one thing: to see what’s on the horizon in the world of mobile for 2013.
We’re expecting new devices from Samsung, LG, ZTE, Huawei, Nokia, Asus, and more — and you can follow all of our coverage from here. In the meantime, here’s what you can look forward to.
Apple could launch its $330 “iPhone mini” as early as this summer to boost the company’s smartphone sales in China, according to Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty. It’s expected the low-cost device could provide Apple with an additional 20% of the smartphone market, adding to the 10% it has already claimed with the iPhone 5. And with smartphone prices now beginning to stabilize in China, now would be an ideal time for such a device.
So the Consumer Electronics Show is over for another year, and for those who’ve been in Las Vegas covering it for us, it’s back to normality. While we allow the Cult of Mac team to sober up, it’s time to look back at the best gizmos CES had to offer. There were thousands of products on show — far too many to cover in one week — but there were a handful that really stood out.
We’ve put together a list of awesome things that we were blown away by, including smartphones, accessories, gadgets, and more. Check it out and tell us what you’re most looking forward to getting your hands on in 2013.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — One of the big stories at this year’s Mobile World Congress is Android tablets. If last year saw the things popping out like maggots from a rotting wound, this year they are skittering across the floor like a carpet of startled cockroaches. And like cockroaches, they all look pretty much the same. So let’s take a look at a couple of them: ZTE’s PF100 and T98.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — There’s a curious flipside to Microsoft’s iron-grip on the minimum specs for Windows 7 phones: They’re pretty much all alike. This is clearly to Microsoft’s advantage — who cares what brand is on the box as longs as it runs Windows? But it makes it hard to write much about new handsets unless they have great style (Nokia) or, say, a fancy camera. And so there is almost nothing to say about the ZTE Orbit.
Don’t underestimate the power of China when it comes to the cellphone market. ZTE, based in the populous Asian nation, became the world’s No. 4 maker of mobile phones, overtaking Apple, which held the spot in the previous three-month period.
Apple has already overtaken Nokia as the smartphone leader when it comes to the number of units manufactured, but according to a forecast from DigiTimes, the Cupertino company could also overtake the once unbeatable Finnish phone vendor in shipments by the end of this year.
