LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE ASIA EXPO 2013: Handset vendors who focus on offering a low price, but ignore creativity and the development of their own intellectual property, will “harm the end users and finally be eliminated by the market”, Lv Qianho, general manager of the handset marketing strategy department at ZTE, told Mobile World Live.

Discussing the emergence of a new breed of low-cost device makers in markets such as China and India, the executive said: “On one hand, this provides more choices for end-users and stimulates the market growth. On the other hand, this also intensifies competition and reduces the profit of some vendors.”

“We hold that only the vendors who have core competitiveness, sustainable creativity, and devote to developing devices with good user experience can benefit end-users and drive the positive development of the mobile phone market,” he continued.

In 2012, ZTE was ranked as a top four player in the worldwide handset and smartphone charts, and moving forward, “in order to further provide consumers with better-experience handsets, enhance our competitiveness, and gradually build the ZTE brand, we are carrying out a strategic transformation”, the executive said.

ZTE is also bullish on the prospects of Mozilla’s Firefox OS in the region, having announced its first device powered by the platform earlier this year.

“In Asia, 40 per cent of consumers are still using feature phones; they hope for a lower price for a smartphone,” the executive said.

Advantages of Firefox OS include it being based on HTML5, reflecting industry app and content trends; simpler hardware requirements offering lower device costs which will attract “price-sensitive users”; appeal to early adopters; and the work of Mozilla, ZTE and other vendors and operators in consolidating the Firefox OS ecosystem.

“ZTE has launched in Latin America a Firefox-based handset “Open”, and will gradually introduce it to the Asian market,” he said.