Huawei is targeting to double its current mobile phone market share in Kenya by next year. The company’s share of the market currently stands at 10 percent and is looking to increase it to 20 percent come next year.
To achieve the goal, Huawei will be betting not only on the introduction of its flagship products into the local market but also middle and entry level quality but affordable smartphones.
Recently, Huawei launched their P8 device targeting the high-end market in Kenya and saw it sell over 200 devices in a week, with its innovation framework heavily focused around smartphone design. The company attributes the uptake of its smartphones to the high level of Internet connection and availability of 3G and 4G networks.
Huawei also unveiled the Honor 7i smartphone in Beijing, with a 180-degree rotating camera that allows users to take photos both from the rear and the front of the device at its highlight feature.
Users might be concerned about the durability of this feature but Huawei says the camera can be rotated 100,000 times. Kenya has seen similar innovations with the recent product in the market, the Huawei P8, according to Millicent Ngatia, the Marketing Director of Kenya Huawei device department, this uptake is because of the ability to create separate personal and work spaces on the device, an ideal security feature for high end users especially business executives.
“For a USD 500 retail price, we tend to go beyond basic applications and design but embed creativity and security in the P8 device”, says Mark He, the General Manager of Kenya Huawei device department. The company acknowledges the importance of attracting high end users by embedding some innovative features into the P8 that are skewed towards business enterprises applications especially where data & sensitive information is a concern.
Despite the changing traditional work place, which requires modern mobility features in smartphones, a device design is key The P8 features a compact and powerful dual-antenna design with a rapid switching technology that allows the phone to intelligently recognize the best mode to reduce dropped calls and maintains a stronger signal. “Our aim to make sure users are productive and effective both at home and at work”, says He. The device’s power efficient display delivers great battery life.
In the third quarter 2014/15, Communication Authority of Kenya reported an expansion of 2.9 percent point in Kenya’s mobile penetration to reach 85.5 percent up from 82.6 percent attained during the preceding quarter. Data/internet subscriptions grew by 14.3 per cent during the quarter to 18.8 million from 16.3 million subscriptions in the last quarter. Consequently, the estimated number of Internet users rose to 29.1 million up from 26.1 million users estimated during the previous quarter. 71.7 percent up of the population had access to the Internet up from 64.1 percent during the last quarter.
