Nigerian Mobile Phone Market In The Next Five Years- Expert

Since the launch of the first Phantom phone, Phantom A, Tecno Mobile has released series of the Phantom brand. The latest is Phantom 5 launched yesterday in Lagos. The managing director, Tecno Group Nigeria, Chidi Okonkwo, told Naij.com the motive behind the new entrant and what Nigerian mobile phone market will look like in five years
What is the motive for launching another Tecno phone, Phantom 5?
Phantom 5 phone is an innovative product we thought we should introduce to the Nigerian market at this point in time. We identified different segments of the Nigerian market and we classified the music category. And you could observe that our products are being classified along these segments. These include the camera category. Early this year, we launched Boom j 7 being targeted at music lovers. In August, we launched Camon C8 which is targeted at camera enthusiasts. This time, we have decided to launch a premium device that is Phantom 5. The new series is phenomenal because the camera and audio quality fantastic. And of course, comes with ultra-call processor which makes the applications and operation of a phone as efficient as any smart phone can be. This is the best mobile technology we can have in this part of the world. At the market price we are offering, it is the best product you can find in the Nigerian market.

Why do you think Nigerians need this phone?
Today we are launching a mobile phone that has not been seen in Nigerian market. We thought of a phone that wouldn’t cost Nigerians the whole world and that is the answer. It’s quite different from the usual phones. It has a metal body and not the usual plastic type. We hope Nigerians would appreciate this. It comes loaded with various features, Android 4.1 operating system which makes you run your application smoothly. It also comes with a strong battery of 3000 mah battery which enables you to use the phone endlessly if you are browsing, playing music or receiving calls. It can serve you more than 6.5 hours if you are receiving calls. For basic calls and internet surfing, it can last for two days without charging. Putting all these together, we hope the Nigerian customers would appreciate this latest effort from Tecno.

When will Phantom5 be available in the Nigerian market?
We are presently running promo on Phantom 5 in specific shops across the city. By tomorrow (Today) it will be available for people to buy at the retail price. The first sets of buyer stand the chance of getting a Boom J7 phone.
When Tecno phones were newly introduced in Nigeria, you had the cheap and noisy type but in recent times, your company seems to have repackaged the phones. Tecno androids are now in vogue. How did you achieve this?
In every form, we tried as much as possible to be renovative with our products. We have very strong and research development programmes across the country. We often research and identify the needs of our customers and we come up with products that would meet these needs. This has been the differentiating factor. More also, Tecno focuses on the needs of the African market and Nigeria constitutes the largest part of the market. We are not mincing words with our promise to provide efficient and affordable phones. We have offered Nigerians efficient and affordable phones over the years.

From your experience, what are the challenges confronting mobile phone businesses in Nigeria?
One of the issues in Nigerian mobile phone market is the issue of counterfeiting. There are various counterfeits products in the market and we want to appreciate the regulatory authorities for their efforts so far. But a lot is still required to ensure that the counterfeiting menace is eradicated because it affects the quality of service. It also causes a lot of loss to manufactures and even to the government in terms of revenue. If we have better ideas of how to address counterfeiting in Nigeria, it will boost revenue. The manufacturing companies will be able to make more money and generate more employment.
How would assess the Nigerian mobile phones market and its future potentials?
Mobile phones market in Nigeria is dynamic and evolving. Nigeria with over 160 million populations; a larger percentage of the population often use two phones at a time. So we believe that the market is still evolving not saturated yet. In previous years, we had feature phones. Not quite long, we had data from the various network providers and now people can use smart phones for different purposes: health and various payments platforms which can be facilitated by the smart phones. So we believe we can still do a lot in the Nigerian mobile market. The demand for mobile phones in Nigeria will still be very strong in the next five years.