Should all go according to plan, South Africa will be the first African country to host a smartphone manufacturing plant in the continent.
The plant is being propositioned by Johannesburg start-up, Onyx Connect, a privately backed company that has already raised $10.8 million from investors according to report from Bloomberg. The company will be leveraging low costs and growing local demand to build handsets, tablets and other devices based on Google Inc.’s Android system.
“We are talking to companies to manufacture handsets, laptops and possibly Android TV boxes” Van der Merwe said in an interview.
Onyx is licensed to load Google software like Android and Chrome onto devices sold under its brand or products it provides for customers. The ongoing talks will be with Google and Johannesburg-based Vodacom.
The race to build the first smartphone plant in Africa has been on for a while among top smartphone consuming countries like Nigeria and South Africa. In May 2013, Tecno group, through its vice president Arif Chowdhury disclosed plans by the company to build a plant in Nigeria. According to Chowdhury the company was waiting for right policies of government on duty structure for mobile phone import to finalize their plans in building the plant.
Three years after, Nigeria is yet to get a smartphone plant despite the fact that the country accounts for the largest and fastest telecommunications market in Africa with about $38 billion investment and active mobile subscriptions of over 150 million as at September, 2016.
However, with 34 percent penetration, South Africa leads the continent in the number of people using smartphones, followed by Nigeria.
By partnering with Onyx Connect, Google is banking on local production in Africa increasing sales in a continent where it is trailing Opera in browser usage. Opera accounted for 39 percent of web traffic in September whereas Google grossed 32 percent of the market share according data made available by StatCounter Global Stats.
Onyx plans to produce devices that are cost effective and well suited to the African market. A device that comes with camera and 1 gigabyte of memory could be sold for just $30. The Bloomberg report quoted disclosed that Onyx will set up a distribution centre in Ethiopia within the next 12 to 18 months.
Some of the raw materials such as circuit-board designs for the smartphones will be sourced from China, according to Onyx. The rest of the designing will be done by Onyx. “The plastic cases are being produced locally, and Onyx has its own research and development capability,” Van der Merwe said.
FRANK ELEANYA
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