Phone makers in digital business drive amid fierce competition

Phone manufactur- ers are partnering with content ser- vice providers and applications developers to build sophisticated digital ecosystems around their respective hardwares, with a view to further differen- tiating themselves and gar- nering more marketshare in a highly competitive industry.

With Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, emerging as one of the top destina- tions for technology com- panies, industry observers are of the view that this new market direction is a fallout of heated compe- tition in the industry as handset manufacturers look to boost customer loy- alty, and ultimately drive up revenues. The country’s mobile phone market is expected to be valued at over N1 trillion ($5.7 billion) by the end of this year, according to African Global Mar- ket Research agency.

This complex ecosystem built into these high capacity smartphones and tablets, according to them, is a combination of a pletho- ra of digital services in- cluding, music and movie streaming, online shopping and payments, gaming, e-books, e-health, file shar- ing, social media, among many others. But these services, they further add, are deliber- ately packaged in such a manner that they meet the needs of upwardly mobile Nigerians.

Read also: Telecoms outlook bright amid fierce economic headwinds

In recent time, Samsung, Microsoft mobile devices, formerly Nokia, BlackBer- ry, Canadian smartphone maker, Huawei Technolo- gies, Infinix Mobile, among others, have all launched innovative smartphones into the Nigerian market, pre-installed with a wide collection of premium mo- bile services and applica- tions designed primarily to make the mobile consumer experience more enjoyable and productive.

Emmanouil Revmatas, director of information technology and mobile for Samsung Electronic West Africa (SEWA), confirmed the new development, stat- ing, “This is direction the phone industry is mov- ing towards. We are not just about selling boxes or hardware.” We are building appli- cations, content services around these devices.

We are creating a complete eco- system for our customers to give them a better user experience”, he told Busi- nessDay at the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 in Lagos, recently. Revmatas added that Samsung is offering cus-tomers one year free sub- scription for Bloomberg, 6 months free subscription for Walls Street Journal (WSJ), 15 gigabits of storage on DropBox, among other apps and services, valued at N100,000, almost the same price as the device (N125, 000). “If you look at it criti- cally, we are almost giving the device away for free”, Revmatas added. The local phone makers are not left out of the party.

Indigenous phone maker, Solo Phone, only recently entered the Nigerian mar- ket with series of cost ef- fective smartphones with best consumer experience and entertainment. Tayo Ogundipe, chief ex- ecutive officer, Solo Phone, said this development is coming at a time when the mobile phone is transiting from a voice centric device to a multi-purpose device.