When
night approaches San Francisco, the worldwide famous bay bridge starts to be
crowded by blocks of cars. Automobile tail light sparkles in the darkness,
which extends from San Francisco to Oracle Arena of Auckland. Many a fan
gathered here in particular to cheer for Golden State Warriors, which was one
reason of heavy traffic. In the hot season of 2014-2015, Golden State Warriors
has been the largest champion hot, with its first winning rate up to now.
Oracle Arena is also regarded as the most horrible magical home field. Almost
all rivals have been defeated.
Here
is also the home of field of ZTE Corporation.
ZTE
Corporation has cooperated with three NBA teams in October of 2014 including
Golden State Warriors, being the official smartphones sponsor of Golden State
Warriors. Nowadays ZTE Corporation also marched steadily and smoothly with the
Golden State Warriors being braver after more fight.
By
the end of the fourth quarter of 2014, ZTE ranked the fourth in American mobile
phone market, which has occupied 7% market shares. And prepayment market share
is 21%, ranking second. In the fourth quarter of 2014, the American shipment of
ZTE mobile phone has risen 80% from the earlier year.
“ZTE
is capturing American’s hearts and wallets”. Maybe the report topic of local
media has best expounded the current situation of ZTE.
Sports marketing
localization
For
Chip Bowers, the CEO of Golden State Warriors, one of the happiest things is
that he can meet Cheng Lixin in playing day, who is senior vice-president and
CEO of ZTE Corporation in North America district.
Because
that means success-there is no exception before.
“Lixing
is our lucky star.” Chip Bowers told Economy
& Nation Weekly in February 1st, 2015. This day Golden State Warriors
rightly fought against Suns. Previously Golden State Warriors has suffered
twice defeats in succession. And in the first segment, Suns had leaded by 10
scores. However, Chip Bowers got relaxed at once when his subordinate told him
Cheng Lixin had come here to watch match with his friends.
So
it was! The final outcome was Golden State Warriors’ success with great
advantage of19 scores.
Cheng
Lixin was full of joy as well.
In
the packed-out Oracle Arena, the LED screen of ZTE logo and ZTE mobile phone
advertisement would appear in every corner every several minutes. In the half
time, the random lottery draw will start and Cheng Lixin would award the prize
for the lucky fans. Sometimes the prize is newly hot mobile phone of ZTE. Sometimes
he would be invited to the central of playground to give out prize.
Profound
accumulation: localization looks simple but actually difficult, success often
lies in details
For
example, upgrading of South American users is slow, the application demand of which
also differ from other districts. The average cycle of changing mobile phone is
12-18 months. Thus the quality of hardware must guarantee good condition within
two years and large upgrading space has to be maintained.
At
the same time, the United States is rightly the market dominated by operators. Verizon,
AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile occupied the 90% market share. But operators are
strict with mobile phones’ quality. For example, AT&T even has higher requirements
for custom terminal products than US military. And if experience of users is
not good after purchasing the mobile phones, unconditional return policy is
allowed, which is completely different from Chinese market.
Even
operators will judge if mobile phone vendors had a positive effect on markets,
so they oppose tying the logo to mobile phones.
Besides,
America is a market which is quite strict with intellectual property. Large
corporations will frequently maintain its market share through patent
litigation. Plenty of patent trolls who don’t make production also spare no
efforts to pursue benefits. Once discovering vulnerabilities, they will rush on
like a swarm of hornets to gain profits.
Consequently
lots of famous companies failed after entering the American market.
As
for ZTE its strategy is low profile layouts and steady approach.
In
the beginning of 2010, ZTE promoted its new marketing strategy; many a mobile
phone was just attached the brand of operators. Only like this can it push its
way in the supplying system. And then it can cooperate well with local
operators and users.
Meanwhile
ZTE also devote more to confirm its patent field and succeeded in fighting off
patent trolls.
With
operating strategy being more and more mature, ZTE Corporation started brand
stretching. On one hand, it starts sticking the
logo on the new mobile phones. On the other hand, new sports marketing strategy
set up by cooperating with NBA. For example the brand awareness had improved
from less than 1% to 16% just by sponsoring Houston Rockets.
Nowadays
ZTE Corporation has succeeded in accessing to the whole operators with more
than 100 kinds of products. What’s more, all mobile phones sold in America were
tied its own logo.
Creating and
breakthrough: Cheng Lixin doesn’t follow blindly but wait for opportunity to
hunt for breakthrough
North
America mobile phones started a new trend of exchanging cellphones. At that
time all manufacturers focused energy on postpaid market. However ZTE chose the
ignored prepaid markets and invested a lot.
Before
this many people considered American users were different from Asian users and
Americans may not love large screen mobile phones. Nevertheless Cheng Lixin
confirmed there was a huge potential market locally by much investigation and
research.
“Americans
get accustomed in large houses and big cars, so large mobile phones are easily
accepted.” He spoke to journalists after one exhibition. Afterwards he returned
to Dallas (the head office of ZTE in America) only to find his statement had
become the headlines of newspapers.
Before
long ZTE Corporation launched 4.3 in. large screen mobile phone ZTE Warp and
made a success with the sale of 1 million, standing firm in American market.
The hot ZTE cellphones in China also were sought after by the American market
upon landing.
Besides
LET technology recondition and tablets crossover also supplied good chance for
ZTE enhance market share.
Global
radiation: opening American market meant much to ZTE in the transition
In
2014 ZTE also suffered a great crisis when many domestic brands fought fiercely
in overseas markets.
In
the beginning of 2014 ZTE did adjusting in a large scale and the vice-president
of ZTE Corporation Zeng Xuezhong began to take charge of ZTE terminal business
unit. Afterwards ZTE Corporation started a full-scale transforming such as
production creation, channel adjusting, managing team adjusting, talents
gaining and new mobile phone manufacturer investing.
In
China Zeng Xuezhong reduced the production of middle-to-low-range mobile phones
and developed vigorously in e-commerce and public channel. Mobile phones at a
loss were stopped from being producing; Zeng Xuezhong gave more space to senior
executives of every district in products, designing, promotion, and operators
cooperating and so on, which can bring clearer achievement and responsibility distributing.
In
the whole of 2014, all terminal products shipment of ZTE Corporation has
reached 48 million, realizing the dual increase in sale scale and gross margin.
In addition, brand and experience of users also improved quite a lot.
In
this competition, American market played an important role because America is
not the market of highest but the gathering place of high technology, which
directly radiated North America and European countries.
According
to the lecture of Zeng Xuezhong, the mobile phone key market of ZTE in the future
is right concentration of both China and America, radiating the global markets.