Huawei bets on its latest smartphone to grow Africa sales

China’s Huawei, the world’s third-largest smartphone maker, plans to introduce its latest smartphone – Mate 9, in Kenya and the rest of Africa early next year as it seeks to cement its double-digit sales growth in the continent.

Gean Jiao, president of Huawei consumer business group Middle East and Africa (MEA) believes Africa is a crucial region for the phone maker’s future growth strategy.

Jiao who spoke to journalists during the launch of the Mate 9 smartphone in Munich reckons that the continent, now home to more than 1.61 billion people is expected to account for a big share of the global consumer market in the near future. “Within 10 years, the population will grow by 400 million. In the next five years it will grow by 200 million,” said Jiao.

It’s for this reason, Jiao figures out that it makes sense to expand into Africa and Middle East regions. “We care about the user experience and to give them the best,” he said. The past few years has seen global business leaders and investors become increasingly aware of the vast potential in Africa’s burgeoning consumer market as more of Africa’s population join the consumer class and tens of millions others emerging from poverty.

African consumers, he says are young and willing to spend. “The return on investment in Africa is fair,” he notes adding that the company (Huawei) has reached its targets so far.

That said, a few multinational consumer companies have managed to make important inroads in Africa. Their experience holds valuable lessons for others aspiring to capture the opportunities in one of the world’s fastest-growing consumer markets, which Huawei seeks a share of the pie.

With focus to challenge the dominance of Samsung and Apple , Huawei sees Africa as a key market in attaining its ambitious goal to grow its sales. It is keen to take advantage of Africa’s smartphone growth potential, which analysts suggest will continue to boom as cheaper phones accelerate market penetration and open new markets.

Faster 4G

“We see huge potential, not only with a rising middle class, but also the fact that consumers are more open to try new brands,” explained Jiao. Having made its name as a builder of telecommunications networks, Huawei has been active in the consumer devices market for only a few years.

Besides boosting its smartphone market footprint in Africa however, Huawei is building network infrastructure across the continent particularly for the faster 4G, and expected to complete a new 6,000km sub-sea broadband cable linking Cameroon to Brazil by the end of 2018. The company unveiled Huawei Mate 9, which sells for euro 699 (Sh78,600) and the Porsche inspired design version that targets the high-end market but retails at a higher price of euro 1395 (Sh156,868).

Huawei’s new device takes the Samsung S7 series head-on, which recently debuted locally at Sh86,000 plus as well as the iPhone 6 plus which costs about Sh110,000 in Nairobi. Its latest addition expected in the next few months has a well-built big-screen, huge battery for longevity (around 16-hours of proper use), decent dual camera arrangement (with optical stabilisation), dual SIM and twin-app support.

The Mate 9 has many points of merit. It’s got 64GB on-board storage as standard. There’s dual-SIM capability, or the second slot can be used for a microSD card to further expand that storage. It’s got a great fingerprint scanner that’s well positioned on the rear. And it’s got up to Cat 12 4G capabilities meaning multiple bands for speedy wireless connectivity.

Huawei partnered with German optics company Leica to develop the rear-dual camera for the Mate 9. The partnerships, with Leica and Porsche Design for the Mate 9 is part of Huawei’s strategy to leverage different resources to deliver quality products to its growing customer base.

“The collaboration brings difference and positions us to solve the pain point of consumers. It helps us to always be customer-centric,” reckoned Jiao.