A number of reports have put the African Mobile subscribers at over 1 billion, which is huge by any stretch of imagination. Across Africa, are a number of challenges, but along the way, are a number of opportunities, owing to the youthful growing population, who are becoming connected in droves. Mobile telephony is already making life easy for many Africans because they can now transact various banking and other forms of business activities, using their Mobile phones.
I had a very interesting discussion recently, with Patrick Henchie, Head of Product, Sub-Sahara Africa, HMD Global, who shared his thoughts on Mobile trends in Africa and how Africans can fully maximise these opportunities.
Patrick is of the opinion that, the current young African generation are quite important to the future. These segment of the population, he opined, are all about Mobile. “Africa is phone first. Everything happens, if it is not on Mobile, it’s just not relevant”, Patrick observed. On whether he various governments in Africa are doing enough to maximise this opportunities, Patrick thinks that they are trying their best to do so. He observed that, it all depends on their dispensation to a number of factors, ranging from availability of adequate infrastructure to support the networks, the networks themselves, phones, support, etc. “If you see the way it has grown, there certainly, has been a lot of input and a lot of development in it”, he stated.
Patrick pointed out that everybody sees the benefits in Mobile, when a network erupts and the social upliftment that follows it. He went on to correct the notion flying around that Nokia earlier left the shores of Africa. “Nokia has never left. I think we need to correct talk about that”, he reiterated. He pointed out some of the activities that it had been engaging on, in the African markets all these while. Patrick pointed out that Nigeria is still a very huge market with opportunities for Feature phones, as he distinguished between a Feature phone and Smartphone. He reeled out some of the qualities of a Feature phone, chief of which is long battery life and this, in his opinion, is one of the major feature that people look for when shopping for a Mobile device to buy.
Speaking on competition, he stated that competition and comparison of Mobile phones, will always be there, based on reliability, looks, etc. On the functionality of smartphones these days, Patrick emphasised that these have since moved on from just being smart to being a tool for usage in the hands of people. He stated that, these days, security measures are installed on devices as users are always interested in being safe when using their devices.
On the quality of products that his company is offering to the Nigerian market, Patrick stated that , the company is committed to building a product that is going to be durable and long lasting as well as have a second hand value. He commended that activities at the Computer Village. “It’s like no other place I’ve ever been on earth. I think you engage everyone of your senses when you’re in the Computer Village”, he opined.
On transfer of knowledge by his company to the locals, Patrick stated that his company has a team on ground in Nigeria, some of whom work for the company, while some others serve as Distributor partners and Wholesale partners and all of these set of people are being educated for passing on the knowledge down to the populace. “There is a rare culture of sharing and openness in the team”, he concluded.
