ZTE seems to be the manufacturer to watch. The rising Chinese star will be one of the top five phone makers in the world according to an article in DigiTimes. ZTE already makes Windows Phone for the international market and saw a 40 percent year-over-year growth. According to DigiTimes, “Through its cooperation with a number of service providers, including Vodafone, Hutchison, T-Mobile and other carriers in Italy and Australia, ZTE has expanded its product mix to include GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, Windows Mobile-enabled models, and recently touchscreen models, all targeting the low-cost segment.”

Hopefully the low-cost phone maker will be wise to offer some upgrade path on some of its phone models, considering that Microsoft has changed its Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade policy, deferring the upgrade decision to phone manufacturers rather than stating a hard policy that only newer models with the “Start” button be Windows Mobile 6.5-ready.