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The Chinese phone giant that beat Apple to Africa
One of China's biggest smartphone makers has never sold a handset in the country. Yet thousands of miles away, it dominates markets across Africa. Unknown in the West, Transsion has left global players like Samsung and Apple trailing in its wake in a continent that's home to more than a billion people.
In cities like Lagos, Nairobi and Addis Ababa, busy streets are awash with the bright blue shopfronts of Transsion's flagship brand, Tecno. In China, the company doesn't have a single store, and its towering headquarters in the southern megacity of Shenzhen goes largely unnoticed among skyscrapers bearing the names of more famous Chinese tech firms.
[...] In 2006, Zhu launched Tecno in Nigeria, targeting Africa's most populous nation first. From the start, the company's motto was "think global, act local," which meant making phones that met Africans' specific needs. "When we started doing business in Africa, we noticed people had multiple SIM cards in their wallet," Chowdhury says. They would awkwardly swap the cards throughout the day to avoid the steep charges operators would levy for calling different networks, says Nabila Popal, who tracks the use of devices in Africa for research firm IDC. "They can't afford two phones," says Chowdhury, "so we brought a solution to them." Zhu made all Tecno handsets dual SIM.
More innovations followed. Transsion opened research and development centers in China, Nigeria and Kenya to work out how to better appeal to African users. Local languages such as Amharic, Hausa and Swahili were added to keyboards and phones were given a longer battery life. Extra juice was important. In Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia, for example, the government frequently shuts off electricity to conserve power, leaving people unable to charge their phones for hours. In less developed markets, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chowdhury says, consumers might have to walk 30 kilometers to charge their phone at the local market -- and have to pay to do so. "For those kind of consumers, longer battery life is a blessing," he adds.
Tecno Mobile and itel Mobile.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday October 13 2018, @02:27AM (3 children)
A company listening to their customers and doing things to make their lives easier.
"Elizabeth...i'm coming...it's the big one!"
Drops to floor....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @02:38AM
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(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday October 13 2018, @04:58PM (1 child)
Well, if their customers had a wallet full of sim cards, and their phones only hold two, I personally am not convinced that's a "solution"--sounds merely less bad. But I am not the one doing the research on the ground in Africa and offering solutions.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday October 13 2018, @06:17PM
I'd bet that in most cases one of those cards is used a lot more than the others, in which case being able to leave it in while swapping others could mean a dramatic reduction in swapping. It could also provide an "always available" number, so that friend X on a different network could always ring you and hang up before answering, to avoid connection charges, and you could swap the secondary card to the network you use to talk to them and call back. (assuming of course the high fees are charged once you connect, rather than just for dialing out of network)
Not a perfect solution - but a potentially huge improvement. Imagine what a difference it would make having a cell phone number that would work reliably, rather than people trying to reach you having to call over and over again, hoping that the right sim will be in your phone.