“We are already working on a smartphone based on Mango and it will be launched in Europe,” Jeffrey Fan, a vice-president from ZTE’s terminal devices unit, said during a company event on Wednesday.

Microsoft launched an update of its Windows phone software code-named Mango on Tuesday, hoping a host of new features will help it close the gap on smartphone leaders Google and Apple. 

ZTE and Huawei Technologies, traditionally in the network equipment business, have been aggressively entering the fast-growing mobile devices sector by rolling out smartphones and tablet PCs.

ZTE expects to ship more than 80 million handsets this year, up by a third from last year’s 60 million units, an executive said earlier this year. 

Shipments of smartphones, which run Google’s Android operating system, would rise to 12 million units from 3 million last year, ZTE said.

In the fourth quarter of last year, ZTE became the fourth-largest handset maker by unit shipments globally, ranking behind Nokia, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, market research group IDC said.