Nigeria has become a hotbed of competition for the smartphone makers. The king of the Smartphone space has been BlackBerry for a while now. This is a space that Nokia’s Symbian use to dominate. Symbian slide and lost the position to BlackBerry.
Despite the struggle BlackBerry is going through in the US and European market, their market share in Nigeria keeps growing. Blackberry has been introducing developers to the developer kit for the BlackBerry 10 and they are betting on it as the strategy that will put them back in the smartphone war that is currently being dominated by Apple and Android.
On Tuesday the 25th of September 2012, BlackBerry held a conference in Lagos to further state to the public their commitment to Nigeria and as such they are rewarding fans with BlackBerry Experience outlets in the country. That wasn’t all. They also made a commitment that Nigeria, as well as South Africa, is going to fall into the tier one category of countries that will be getting the new BlackBerry 10 come January 2013.
Samsung, Nokia, HTC and hosts of other OEMs use Microsoft’s Windows Phone Operating System (OS). Microsoft has been working hard to become the third ecosystem globally after Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. In their global move to make all this possible, they have included Nigeria among the markets that is having access to the Windows Marketplace.
What I find shocking while at the Co-Creation Hub is the Microsoft team presenting the Windows Phone 8 and the Windows 8 OS, mentioned that Windows Phone has never been launched in Nigeria. This means that any Windows Phone you see in the Nigerian market today are grey phones—phones that are brought in by users themselves or by unauthorized users.
Are we ever going to see Windows Phone being sold in Nigeria? The Microsoft team revealed that customers should expect Windows Phone to be officially available in Nigeria by Christmas.
While the consumers of smartphones await the launch of Windows Phone in Nigeria officially, Microsoft has been preparing the developers and helping them with training and tools that can make them publish apps and services to the Windows Marketplace. The developers are excited and expectant.
While being excited, the developers entertain fear and some scepticism. If Windows Phone has never been launched in Nigeria, the apps they are building for the platform means they are placing a bet on the future—believing that Many Windows Phone will be sold. Some of them were of the opinion that it is far more wise and profitable to make apps for feature phones and smartphones that are already in the market and enjoying some huge patronage.
In this same space, Tecno, a Chinese company has flooded the Nigerian market with its phones and it has sold lots of units. Unlike the Knock off phones that imitate popular brands like Samsung and Nokia, Tecno is a genuine brand that is making affordable phones for folks in emerging markets.
Tecno isn’t just snapping Nokia shares in the feature phone market, but they have also started Making Android phones. I once held the Tecno T3 in my hand, which is one of their Android phones. I’m yet to see the other one. At only N15,000 [$ 95 USD], you can get a Dual SIM Tecno T3 Android smartphone. That’s cheap, even cheaper than the Samsung GALAXY Pocket.
With all these players in the mobile phones space, it is obvious that this isn’t a game for the boys. Besides Android powered devices, makers of Windows phones, have a tough challenge ahead of them in introducing that platform to the Nigerian market. The Nigerian developer may be excited, but one can’t say if Nigerians would leave BlackBerry, the popular Nokia Phones and go for a Windows Phone.
No doubt, the ever wielding Nigerians, will continue rocking their Blackberry phones. They never bothered about the release of the iphone 5.
Will the BB10 help RIM rapidly grow its market share beyond where it is already?
