Recently, one of the biggest mobile phone manufacturers in the Nigerian market, TECNO Mobile, carried out a survey of mobile-phone competition in Africa. From the survey, they discovered that smartphones in the range of $100-$200 dominate new mobile entrants in Africa year-on-year.

TECNO

“Increased smartphone penetration in Africa poses huge socio-economic benefits for the continent as more African mobile users broaden their businesses, educational and social opportunities through mobile internet access,” said Vane Ni, TECNO Marketing Director for Africa, while discussing the company’s survey on the African mobile space.

As the world becomes increasingly interconnected, technology adoption is one of the defining factors in human progress. As a result of this progress, more people are connected to the internet and more people own smartphones.

Africa, with a population of over 1.3 billion people and the resurgence of  consuming middle class, has caught the attention of global Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). These OEM players have seen that there is an attractive market for their range of smart phones in the continent. According to Michael Dearham, Vice President Media for StarTimes Group, currently, there are about 127.5 million smartphone users in Africa.

Growing Smart phone penetration in Africa

TECNO2

At first glance, Middle-Eastern countries on the table above show an impressive smartphone penetration when compared with Africa’s major smartphone markets. However, analysts have argued that percentage penetration figures do not always reflect the actual number of users in a market. A clear instance will be the UAE 2015 smartphone penetration figure, which was put at 64.6 percent, but in actual human figures, this number only represents 2.7 million smartphone users. Compare that figure to Nigeria’s smartphone user base for the same year and the difference is quite shocking – 23.1 million users.

As mobile phone competition gets stiffer in Africa, OEM companies vying for market share hinge their entrant strategies on the shipment of mid-range smartphones into the market.

What you didn’t know about TECNO

In the span of a decade, TECNO has become one of Africa’s most successful smartphone brands.

TECNO has growing shipments of mid-range products such as the TECNO BOOM J and TECNO CAMON series, which are dominating major markets in sub-Saharan Africa.

The mobile company began rolling out its flagship product line – the Phantom series, sometime in 2013 and these high-end smartphones gained market acceptance in a short while.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, the TECNO Phantom 5 was released as one of the pioneer octa-core processor smartphones to hit retail shelves in African markets.

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