Competition: Alcatel Onetouch in new strategies for Nigeria’s big Smartphone market
Nick Imudia is the regional director, Nigeria and Central Africa, for Alcatel Onetouch. He recognizes that Smartphone and tablets market in Nigeria has grown exponentially and said that his company is ready for the competition by giving Nigerian consumers, partners, operators and consumers’ easy access to vast range of affordable products.
Generally, how can you describe the Nigerian market?
Nigeria is a middle income, mixed economy and emerging market, with expanding financial, service, communications, and technology and entertainment sectors. Tech/Internet in Nigeria:Connectivity -38% population online, approx. 67.3M; 94% mobile phone penetration; 27% smartphone penetration. Not only will the Internet be the fastest growth area for expenditure, but it will also be the largest market, worth US$5.6 billion in 2017, ahead of TV (US$1.1 billion) and sports (US$722 million). Great opportunity for Nigerian market to migrate from feature phone to smartphone and get access to the internet.
What informed the decision to enter the Nigerian market with the ALCATEL Onetouch brand?
As the Smartphone and tablet markets have grown, especially here in Nigeria we wanted to bring the Nigerian market affordable yet attractive and feature-rich devices in order to meet the needs of our customers. We recognise that every mobile user needs and deserves a device that offers good performance, beautiful aesthetics and rich functionality. As such, we’ll strive to offer choice, variety and flexibility to consumers irrespective of their budget. We also wanted to ensure that we had the correct infrastructure in place in order to get these devices into the hands of our customers. We believe that we now have the correct mix to grow the brand and make an impact in the Nigerian market.
There are several phone brands in the country, how do you intend to break even considering your long absence from the Nigerian market?
The short term priority is to give Nigerian consumers, partners, operators and their consumers’ easy access to our vast range of affordable products. In the mid to long term, we believe we can grow Alcatel Onetouch into a major player in the Nigerian market. We have the brand, the products and the distribution capabilities to grow aggressively in the years to come. Our key focus is to build the Alcatel Onetouch brand by providing tools that will grow and enrich our Nigerian market. We recognise that every Smartphone user needs and deserves a device that offers good performance, beautiful aesthetics and rich functionality. As such, we’ll strive to offer choice, variety and flexibility to consumers irrespective of their budget.
What is your distribution network like in Nigeria?
Alcatel Onetouch work with a variety of distribution partners, carriers and networks globally. Locally we are working closely with TD Mobile to effectively bring our product portfolio to the Nigerian market. These products are available in key retailer stores, major online platforms and operators.
What is your global market position and what should Nigerians expect from your brand?
Alcatel Onetouch is unexpected, down to earth, irreverent and colourful. We believe that what makes technology smart is what you can do with it rather than what it can do. Alcatel Onetouch is a global brand which has redefined the mobile mass market by making the latest mobile technologies accessible to everyone. It is the first to recognize the mass market’s needs and has since brought choice, variety and flexibility to customers – from operators to consumers. By combining its understanding of local insights and control of the end-to-end manufacturing process, Alcatel Onetouch delivers the best user experience with innovative, feature-rich and high performance mobile devices designed with simplicity. Alcatel Onetouch views the device as a hub, meaning that we consider complete home connectivity when we are designing and producing every product. We are a global base with more than 100 offices in excess of 160 countries, 7 R&D centres and carrier relationships in all regions around the world. Alcatel Onetouch is a brand within TCL Communication, an international multicultural company which designs, develops, and markets globally a growing range of mobile and Internet devices.
How prepared is your team to operate in the complex market with many competitions with bigger local market networks
Currently we have a virtual office headed up by Nick Imudia as Regional Director. Nick has the support of a local team on the ground, as well as the full support of the Alcatel Onetouch Africa team. Nick brings a wealth of experience from both a Nigerian market and mobile industry perspective. His experience in managing sales, marketing, consumer care, logistics, retail execution and developer engagement for a large mobile brand means he is bringing a wide range of knowledge and insight. With the support of our local team as well as the Alcatel Onetouch African team, it is our priority to give Nigerian consumers, partners and operators easy access to our vast range of affordable products. This includes establishing the fundamentals such as in store live or dummy devices, promoters, field marketing and training for sales staff as well as digital marketing and social media platforms. Once this has been established we will then turn our focus on building the Alcatel Onetouch brand into a major player in the Nigerian market. Alcatel Onetouch is partnering with major online platforms in Nigeria to give consumers access to our products. As part of our strategy in bringing devices to our consumers it was essential that we partner with a strong distribution company. This is where we turned to TD Mobile, an arm of Technology Distributions Ltd. With their wide distribution network and infrastructure already established in Nigeria we will effectively deliver our products to the market.
What courses does Alcatel Onetouch support globally as part of its CSR and what will be the focus of your CSR activities in Nigeria?
At Alcatel Onetouch, we have a strong will to satisfy customers, to protect our environment and planet. To achieve this goal, we launched an initiative to sell some of our mobile phones without wall chargers. We decided to launch this initiative in Western Europe as a first step, and we now encourage our partners to join the movement. According to latest information, this type of initiative could reduce the amount of electronic waste caused by unnecessary and unused charges. The charger clutter represents a large part of 51,000 tons of electronic waste annually.
We have learnt that, most consumers now do already have suitable chargers at home and that standardized chargers are readily and widely available in the market.The majority of Smartphone’s and tablets are powered by a MicroUSB cable and we will continue providing our consumers with a MicroUSB charging cable in the box, which complies with computers and/or any USB compatible wall-charger. With this initiative we aim to reduce the amount of resources used in the manufacturing and packaging process, the amount of waste sent to landfill sites and the amount of fuel used for transport.