ZTE has sold more than two million ZTE Blade handsets, becoming one of the top best-selling smartphones in the world.

ZTE continues to challenge the market leaders in the handset market, and expects to ship more than 80 million handsets this year, up 60 million units in 2010.

The ZTE Blade was first launched in the UK in the second half of 2010, and is now available in over 30 countries and regions, including the UK, France, Greece, Spain, Poland and Turkey. It has also successfully penetrated Japan and Finland, the home markets of major ZTE competitors.

Launched as the Orange San Francisco in the UK, the ZTE Blade’s popularity actually exceeded that of the iPhone 4 in the UK at one stage in early 2011 according to online purchase tracking company Hotukdeals.

In the annual handset opinion survey organised by the online XDA Developers forum, the ZTE Blade won a total of 24.66% votes, placing it first among the 32 handsets as judged by forum users.

The Blade handset’s popularity has also been highlighted by the hundreds of calls and emails received by ZTE asking when the next version of Android and an upgraded CPU would be available on the Blade.