China's first lady Peng Liyuan was once spotted taking pictures with a home-made smart phone during the official visit to Germany with her husband President Xi Jinping. Peng's Nubia Z5Mini, a darling work of Shenzhen, Guangdong-based ZTE Group, immediately aroused attention among Chinese consumers. Latest numbers showed that the sales of Z5S mini doubled than the previous day after the photo was posted, driving up share price of ZTE. 
　　　
"ZTE's phones doesn't rise to fame overnight. ZTE attached great importance to quality and innovation since it started the business and has abundant experiences on patent utilization in oversea markets." says Shen Jianfeng, senior manager from IPR department of ZTE.

According to Shen, ZTE invests 10% of the total revenue into R&D and talent cultivation, all these factors contribute to ZTE's fast growth and rising.

ZTE's efforts on innovation are far beyond what mentioned above. As of the end of 2013, they have owned more than 52,000 patents worldwide, 90% of which are inventions, In 2013 alone, ZTE has sold out more than 3.5 million mobile phones, ranking the fourth in the world.
Days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology releases an announcement on accelerating home-made mobile phone brands development, suggesting that Chinese manufacturers should explore more the international markets and strive to promote home-made brands' influence internationally.

"Enjoying the favorable external environment, Chinese enterprises should seize the opportunities for self-improvement, enhancing abilities to innovate and reinforcing patent portfolio overseas. ZTE, for instance, will work hard to become high-end handsets and improve the patent layout in European and American markets and in the emerging markets." says Shen.

Shen says that more and more Chinese companies are now encountering 337 Investigations when they access to the American market. ZTE has won several 337 Investigations against TPL、IDCC and Flashpoint. "Like ZTE, more Chinese companies have the abilities to solve IPR disputes in the international markets, and they will become much stronger with their daily-growing IPR abilities."Says Shen. 

(China IP News)