Here comes Nubia, ZTE's new smartphone brand

Fresh from celebrating its elevation into the smartphone top four, ZTE next month plans to unveil a new smartphone brand – Nubia.

It has released some sketchy details about the new brand through Weibo and the Chinese press, the main one being that it will be aimed primarily at ZTE’s home market.

With the carrier network market flatlining, and ZTE forecasting a loss in the current quarter, handsets are suddenly a big deal for the company.

ZTE’s terminals business accounted for a third of total revenue in the first half, up from 30% a year earlier. And besides ranking fourth, just behind RIM, in the IDC Q3 smartphone rankings, ZTE was fourth in global handset sales in Q2, with 4.3% of the market.

To kick off its new brand it's hired Italian designer Stefano Giovanni, better-known for his Alessi kitchenware, to make the first Android-based Nubia device.

Ni Fei, the head of ZTE’s mobile phone division, says Nubia is the company’s first new brand in its 27 years of existence and is part of a long-term branding campaign. “Brand acceptance is a process rather than merely an explosion in advertising,” he says.

The other point is of note is the name, which strikes Engadget as coincidentally similar to another European handset brand, and according to ZTE is based on both the ancient Nile Valley civilisation and the Latin word for ‘cloud’.

It’s also designed in a way that is difficult to read. Presumably that will come "acceptance."