While all eyes might be on companies such as Samsung, HTC, and Apple, one thing many folks didn’t anticipate is ZTE jumping out from the “other” grouping to push itself into the top five mobile phone vendors based on shipments and market share, going past RIM and Apple on the way to fourth spot. Market analysis firm IDC released its data for the final quarter of 2010 and ZTE had a juicy 76.8% year-over-year growth and shipped 16.8 million mobile phones in Q4, compared to 9.5 million in the same quarter the year before. The bad news for RIM is that it’s now confined to the “other” category, with Nokia, Samsung, LG, ZTE and Apple taking up the top five spots in that order respectively.
