As of May 2020, the number of telephone connections in Nigeria was slightly above 192 million and mostly dominated by feature phones. However, it is the smartphone segment of the market which controls about 30 percent of the entire phone market in Nigeria that nearly had Canon questioning its camera business recently.
Smartphone cameras are getting better, smarter, and crispier with every new device release from Samsung or Apple. They are also getting cheaper as Chinese manufacturer Transsion which range of devices (Tecno, itel, and Infinix) dominate the market share in both Nigeria and Africa, release new devices every other month. To fight off competition from more powerful Chinese brands like Huawei and OPPO which are also building outposts in the continent, Transsion has demonstrated the capacity to do everything including upgrading its phone cameras to global standards.
Somesh Adukia, managing director of Canon, Central, and North Africa told Businessday that while Africans want affordable devices, they also prioritise quality.
Canon’s camera business lost 6 percent in 2019 and while it regained some grounds at the beginning of the year, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has put a question mark on its financial expectations in 2020. The losses hit particularly hard in April.
Canon’s wobbly beginning
Canon, the brand, arrived on the African continent 50 years ago. However, it took many more years for Canon, the office, to make its physical entry and get a coherent strategy together. As an entry approach, the company had set up the Canon Middle East and Africa office that catered for selected countries in Africa and in the Middle East.
Adukia calls it “a fragmented approach” for the continent. While the approach had the rest of Africa as an objective, it however prioritised mostly markets in the Middle Eastern countries and South Africa. The company soon realised the approach was not working. It then opted for a more direct strategy with the creation of the Canon Central and North Africa.
“Our first learning was that if you want to develop a business or your brand in Africa then you have to be in Africa. You cannot manage from a distance, you have to be in Africa and you have to give power and authority to African locals who understand the market.” Adukia said.
As part of the new strategy, Canon opened up six new local offices, including one in Nigeria. The six locations now employ more than 60 people who are managing Canon’s business in various countries. The company also has representatives and channel partners for effective distribution.
Canon’s new approach seems to be working as the continent now contributes about 20 percent of its total market revenue and has also opened more product service centres. But Adukia says the 20 percent share is more than what the potential of the continent can give if properly planned. Hence, at the beginning of 2020, Canon formed its Project Africa 500. The objective of the project is to in the next three years take Canon’s turnover from the whole of Africa from the current 300 million euros to 500 million euros.
Before the lockdown was declared the project team was studying the journey of any Canon product right from a Canon factory to the hands of the consumer; what challenges does the Canon product go through; how can the company build up an effective logistics system? How can it offer the correct pricing to the customer? How can it offer a world-class offering to a customer in Africa? It also wanted to come up with dedicated products for the continent.
Project Africa was supposed to be concluded in 2022 but has now been moved by one year, to 2023.
Africa’s event market and budding Nollywood interest
In studying Africa, one of the things that stood out for Adukia and the Canon team is Africa’s love for colourful events. The list of events is extensive and varying in degree. There is the day of the wedding, wedding anniversaries, birthdays, child naming ceremonies, thanksgivings, matriculations, graduation, and burial ceremonies, each of them needing to be captured on a good camera.
While smartphone cameras usually show up at these events, the organisers still prefer a professional cameraman to be present.
This is where Adukia sees endless opportunities for Canon’s cameras. According to him, smartphone cameras have only helped amplify the need for people to use professional cameras.
“I prefer using a professional camera instead of a smartphone,” Esther Anko Bassey, a Lagos-based professional photographer who also uses a Canon camera for event coverage, told Businessday. Using a professional camera, for her, is a matter of quality of the photographs which her clients insist on. The quality of the photographs usually drops for nearly all smartphones when the pictures are to be transferred from the phones to the laptops.
But it is Nigeria’s movie industry popularly known as Nollywood that holds the most fascination for Canon. Recently, the company signed a deal with Kunle Afolayan, a prolific producer and director with blockbuster movies like ‘The Figurine’, ‘October 1’, and ‘Phone Swap’.
Nollywood is the biggest industry not only in Africa but across the world it is number three movie-making industry. With the increased presence of Netflix in the country, the need for better cameras and other gadgets is even more pronounced. Afolayan who shot his first movie with a Canon camera now has a bigger offer to shoot his upcoming movie project ‘Citation’ with a range of Canon camera C500 mark 2. Canon is already exploring other partnerships with some other big names in the industry.
COVID-19 is not all blues for Canon
Like every industry player, Canon has its share of negative news from the COVID-19 pandemic. April numbers, in particular, was not flattering. But Adukia says the company is starting to recover from May and June 2020.
But while the pandemic pulverized revenue from the camera and products like its multi-functional printers, it has paved the way for other products like the inkjet printers to thrive. The portability of the printers makes them ideal for the needs of people working from home during the lockdown. Similarly, schools are not functioning. Most of the schools in every country are operating online learning and there is a lot of homework, assignments for students and teachers which require a good printer at home.
“So progressively we are doing well and we hope that African markets and African people are known for their resilience. They have fought many pandemics and many challenging times in the past and come out very successful. We as a company are girded up to support the African markets and nationals with this resilience and we are always ready with our products and services to enable this in a better manner,” Adukia said.
