ZTE shipped 26m smartphones in H1, to launch 'secret product' developed by ex-Blackberry team

Chinese technology giant ZTE is set to launch a "secret product" that it hopes will change the landscape of the global smartphone business following the hiring of a team of former Blackberry staffers last year.

Speaking on the sidelines of ZTE's global analyst conference in Shanghai on Monday, Adam Zeng Xuezhong, chief executive of the company's mobile devices unit, said that ZTE would launch a new flagship smartphone "very soon".

Adopting late Apple CEO Steve Jobs' favourite line during a presentation to hundreds of global industry analysts, Zeng told the crowd: “One more thing, do you remember what we did last year? We hired a top Blackberry design team to join us in North America.”

“After they joined us, we also set up our [research and development] centre in North America and we will soon launch a product which I can call ‘A Product’ today but you will see it coming out soon,” he said.

ZTE hired dozens of former BlackBerry designers and engineers in early 2014 in the United States and Canada, according to people familiar with the situation. Those former BlackBerry employees quickly set up a new team at ZTE, which was reorganised and launched as ZTE’s first North America-based R&D centre late last year.

Since then the team has been working intensively on a new mobile device, which ZTE considers a top secret and few even inside the company know about. ZTE seems to be following notoriously tight-lipped Apple's strategy on R&D, where investors and customers are kept guessing until a new device is announced, building hype and anticipation ahead of launch.