First Lady bolsters popularity of ZTE’s Nubia

Mobile phone brand Nubia, owned by China's telecommunications equipment maker ZTE Corp, has gained a surge in attention in its home market because China's First Lady Peng Liyuan used one of its models, the general manager of Nubia said Tuesday.

The photo of Peng snapping a picture with her smartphone during President Xi Jinping's state visit to Germany sparked huge interest of Chinese Web users in the handset.

The first lady's phone was confirmed to be a Nubia Z5 mini by ZTE's Executive Vice President Zeng Xuezhong on his Weibo Saturday.

The sales of Nubia Z5S mini, an upgraded version of Z5 mini, were three times higher than the normal in the last two days, online retailer jd.com said in a statement e-mailed to the Global Times Tuesday.

JD is the sole retailer of ZTE's Nubia Z5S mini, according to the statement.

"We did not know our first lady has been using our phone until the news report. We are flattered that our products can be accepted by the first lady," Ni Fei, general manager of Nubia, told the Global Times Tuesday.

Ni refused to disclose the specific sales growth caused by the news, but said this will surely have a positive impact on ZTE's newly launched mobile phone brand.

But Tian Ying, a Beijing-based independent industry analyst, said that the promotional effect may be difficult to last for a long period of time, and the company still has a long way to go in brand building in order to compete with foreign brands like Samsung.

Due to a lack of brand recognition, ZTE's handsets are not performing well in the China market, Tian told the Global Times Tuesday.

Data from Beijing-based market research firm Analysys International shows that ZTE only accounted for 3.87 percent of China's mobile phone market by sales in the fourth quarter of 2013, ranking the seventh behind major foreign brands like Samsung and Apple as well as local stars like Xiaomi and Lenovo

Tian noted that furthering its presence in the domestic electronics products market, especially the mid- and high-end segment, is the key.

ZTE needs to make more efforts to diversify its product range, otherwise it cannot reflect the consumers' need in China, she said.

In the past, the handsets under ZTE brand have been mainly sold in partnership with the three domestic telecom carriers, targeting low-end market, according to Tian.

ZTE officially launched its premium Nubia mobile phone brand last October, aimed at the domestic mid- and high-end market segment, according to Ni.

The Hong Kong-listed ZTE reported a 10.6 percent year-on-year decline in its revenue last year to 75.23 billion yuan ($12.12 billion), but gained net profit of 1.36 billion yuan, up 147.8 percent year-on-year.