Tech

Samsung says broadband makes South Africa mobile market bigger than Nigeria’s

Published

6 years ago

January 18, 2018

Samsung Electronics yesterday said South Africa’s mobile market is still stronger than that of Nigeria despite huge difference in population.

The company, however, said that Nigeria has the potential to overtake the market with time adding that developments in the market at the moment has already shown that this would not take long to happen.

Chief Executive Officer, Samsung Africa, Mr Sung Yoon, said despite South Africa’s population being a fraction of Nigeria’s,deep broadband penetration and almost total adoption of smartphone, makes the market bigger.

According to him, “South Africa has almost 95 percent of its mobile market purely on smartphones and 4G/LTE has deep roots in the market unlike in Nigeria where in the overall market feature phones still takes a good percentage and 4GLTE is not widely accessible”

Apparently, that could be why Yoon said that building a manufacturing plant in Nigeria is a project Samsung would not think about now but in the future.

He said: “there are certain factors taken into consideration before building a manufacturing plant. We have to consider market size, Return on Investment and environment among others. But it is a thing we have to consider in the future”

Yoon also hinted on why Samsung drastically reduced staff in its Nigerian office, saying, “in the heat of recession, we needed to do some adjustments. We needed to have more passionate, young and talented people while some others are dropping out. It is a normal company operational strategy not for any other reasons” he added.

Earlier, Yoon had claimed that in shopping for ideas on how to inspire the world and create the future with technologies, products and designs that enrich people’s lives, the company had spent about $16 billion on Research and development, R&D alone.

He noted that the money had resulted in an array of innovative products from Samsung and paid back with great sales which includes over 700 mobile phones and 90 television sets per minute.