When you are talking about the African phone market, global brands like Apple, Samsung are not kings maybe because of the price of their devices. The African market is controlled by Transsion holding’s Trio–TECNO, Infinix and Itel phone brands.
But now, Xiaomi, another top Chinese company has announced the establishment of an African Regional Department to drag the market share with the Shenzhen based Transsion.
Market analysis in the first quarter of 2018 showed that Samsung held the highest market share but Tecno and Itel brands held the second and third highest market share while its sister phone Infinix came 5th just behind another top brand Huawei. With the result, it shows that Transsion holdings is still the king in the African phone market.
This is the reason while Xiaomi wants to step in. This is not surprising because, in the last 18 months, the company has been on expansion streak. The company have opened so many stores across each region and now, they want to come to Africa.
If you can recall, you will discover that this is not the first time that Xiaomi is stepping into the African market. A few years ago, the company launched a few phones in Nigeria but was barred by a court injunction from selling any more phones and products. South African phone company Mi-Fone obtained the court injunction that prevented Xiaomi from selling any phone or product with the trade name “Mi”. Sometime later, Xiaomi obtained a pass that allowed it to sell its products in Nigeria.
But ever since then, only a few Xiaomi phones have been sold by its retail partners. Last year, Jumia – an e-commerce store sold the Redmi Note 5A and Redmi Note 5. The Redmi Note 6 is also currently available in Jumia. Outside these devices, the presence of the company is not felt on the continent. There is also no after sales service. Even though the company is not popular in the continent, most of there products are popular on the continent. Most people still import their products from outside the continent.
Things will be much different now that the company have established an African Regional department. We should expect the official launch of its product in different countries across the continent and we should also expect after sales support.
There newly established department will be headed by Wang Lingming and he will report to Wang Xiang.
Other big announcements that came from the company include changes made in Asia. Indonesia, South Asia and Southeast Asia will now be under the newly created Southeast Asian Region headed by Shi Yan. A new head was also appointed for Russia and CIS regional departments and the patent department has now been merged with the legal department.
Source1, Source2
