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Chinese tech firm ZTE has been making phones for other companies to stick their logos on for years. Now it’s branching out into selling ZTE-branded models, with one of the first being the new, affordable, ZTE Tania.
Set to arrive here in early February for a SIM-free price of around £249, the Tania features a large 4.3″ capacitve touchscreen running at 800×480 resolution, with a 5megapixel camera around the back and a 1GHz single-core processor plus 4GB of storage space inside — plus it’ll come with Windows Phone Mango as its OS.
ZTE expects it to launch on cheap smartphone contracts well below the £20 mark, although if you’d rather go SIM-free the Tania ought to set you back around £250 when it launches in the UK a few weeks from now. [Techradar]
I think this is a great step forward for Micrsoft in winning over that illusive “first time” smartphone buyer demographic that they desperately need. I could see a teenager easily wanting a touch screen phone with Xbox Live over a Blackberry or even an iPod Touch.
Plus, it’s pretty good looking for a budget phone… specs are all pretty much in line with first gen Windows Phones, save for the 4GB of storage space – which is decent enough for apps, and alright if you pull most of your music and other files down from “the cloud”.
Agreed that this is where Microsoft need to aim if they want marketshare. The high end is largely sewn up, but if they can entice people in the “my first smartphone” to go with WP instead of Android (who dominate this sector)they may be able to lock people in for life to their ecosystem.
Exactly. Unfortunately, it’s a strategy that will pay off in the long term rather than the short term. Good news is, it’s pretty clear with the Metro-isation of Windows and Xbox, they’re in it for the long haul.
Yeah, unlike HP/Palm and RIM, Microsoft has the money to burn to ensure they have a place in our digital future.