Lowcost Smartphone Takeover as Patronage Increase

SMARTPHONES that comes with low price have in the last one year taken over the mobile phones market in Nigeria, and the presence of its impact ha been noticed globally.

A study conducted by ABI Research, a global research company had indeed confirmed that the low-cost smartphone shipments would grow from 238 million in 2013 to 758 million by 2018.

According to a forecast by market intelligence firm ABI Research handsets in the lower price bracket will account for 44 per cent of all smartphone shipments by 2018.

Director of Operator Department, TECNO Group, Mr. Arit Chowdhury, who was in the country to launch one of the Tecno brand smartphones told Nigerian Compass in an interview that Tecno phones are not cheap as many believe.

He said that Tecno has positioned itself in the market to provide consumers with affordable technology that are found in most expensive smartphones, a trendy that the ABI Research study has revealed.

He said that the technology found in smartphones are also in all smartphone of the Tecno brand adding that they were design to ensure that every Nigerian have access to smartphones.

The ABI study predicted global low-cost smartphone shipments will grow because of the the low penetration of  expensive smartphones and the large subscriber bases of those using low-cost smartphones found developing countries.

ABI senior analyst, Michael Morgan said research showed the feature gap between low- and high-end smartphones is decreasing, making low-cost smartphones a "good enough solution" for price-sensitive consumers in all markets.

This forecast coincides with a recent analysis by Canalys showing both Samsung and Apple lost share to Chinese vendors which play on price to gain traction.

Collectively, the five Chinese vendors shipping the most devices worldwide are Lenovo, Yulong, Huawei, ZTE and Xiaomi – made up 20 per cent of the total market, up from less than 15 per cent a year ago.

Managing director for World Wide Worx, Arthur Goldstuck also predicted an even bigger low-cost smartphone market domination by 2018, saying he believes two-thirds of the smartphones in the market will be low-cost.

"The percentage of low-cost smartphone shipments is likely to be a lot higher once all smartphone manufacturers have low-cost options and also when those low-cost options have become far more powerful," said Goldstuck.

For instance, the Goldstuck noted that in South Africa the trend is already prevalent adding, "The fastest growing smartphone brand in SA is Samsung and the most popular Samsung smartphones are the lower cost ones. The Galaxy Pocket in particular has really given Samsung a massive boost in this market."

In Nigeria, investigations showed that Tecno, HTC and iTel have taken hold of the market as low-cost brand that consumers patronise.

The patronage of low-cost smartphones have already shown a lot excitement in the country according to Chowdhury of Tecno due to the features that are not different from those found in brands like Samsung, Apple and Nokia.

For instance, Chowdhury said that the desire to give quality to its customers made it to partner deliver high quality smartphones adding that is why its TECNO N3 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM7225 chipset with 1GHz processing speed that allow consumers to enjoy a higher Internet speed running on the high performing Android 2.3 operating system.

 And Goldstuck noted too that low-cost smartphones already offer a positive user experience at a fraction of the price of high-end phones saying that it is expected that Apple will also next month announce a low-cost iPhone that will target the developing world.

"I think it is important to note, however, what is low-cost to Apple may not be low-cost to developing markets. If it is a phone that competes with the entry-level BlackBerrys and the Samsung Galaxy Mini, for example, it will obviously pick up significant market share in that segment of the market, which is existing smartphone users.

“But it is not going to pick up from the big growth curve that's coming, which will be from people migrating from feature phones to smartphones. That market is still the biggest potential market for smartphones."