How progressive is feature phone to smartphone adoption in Africa?

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), smartphone sales dropped in 2016. However, it is expected to rebound in 2017. Likewise, according to the newly uploaded Q2 report by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the number of internet subscribers declined ‘YoY’ (in quotes because, YoY should be compared to a corresponding period, hence, in this case, it should be compared to Q2 2016, but yeah…) compared to Q3 2016.

One would expect that for a developing country like Nigeria, our tech adoption increases to a point of saturation and then starts to decline. But can we confidently say we have reached saturation for smartphones if its penetration rate in Nigeria is only about 30% of the mobile phone market (GSMA, 2017)?

Whatever it is, we’ll watch for the 2017 figures and let the analysts do their jobs in telling us why they think there is a decline.

Now, there is this question about whether feature phones are going away in Nigeria considering the 38% YoY growth in Smartphones.

Well, a simple answer (meaning, you can have contrary opinions) is NO. Because the reasons and motivations for people using feature phones are beyond the overarching need of a phone with better performance. Better performance could mean larger screen sizes (speaking of which, IDC predicts that > 5.5inch screened devices are the future, considering the number of uptake in tablets/phablets). Also, better performance could mean camera, speed of device, ability to use social networking sites etc. While all these are truly important, I wonder if we have solved the issue of electricity (needed for charging batteries – smartphone batteries are notorious for dying fast(er) than feature phones, perhaps for reasons being that they use a lot more processing power).

Also, I wonder if we have been able to take 3G connectivity to the about 50% of people in Nigeria living in Rural areas (currently we have 2G – the connectivity in use by feature phones, dominating over 70% of the connections space). In addition, have we been able to solve for illiteracy, affordability etc? Some of the things people in rural areas battle with. Furthermore, have we been able to improve our security system? I and some people I know are still scared of bringing out our smartphones in crowded open public places such as Computer Village (notorious for theft and sales of stolen devices).

Speaking of the Urban areas and people staying in ‘megacities’ like Lagos, we can argue that affordability of a well-designed smartphone device is key to the (low-income earning) working class for ostentatious needs and better integration with work-life (many have work-related WhatsApp groups – an app which is not on many feature phones, as well as work emails). A particular OEM group looked into that market and today has gained more than 50% of the smartphone market in Nigeria, they are the makers of Tecno, Infinix and iTel – Transsion Holdings.

The question now is who will bail out those living in rural areas, dependents (who could be easily be stolen from)?

As a tech company, should your focus or strategy be on moving the current feature phone users to smartphones? Or bringing those who don’t even have access to feature phones directly to smartphones? (I mean, who says we must all pass through feature phones before using a smartphone?).

Secondly, how do you on-board the ‘illiterates/unlearned’ to your device? Improved research? Better product design? below-the-line (BTL) marketing? etc.

I’ll leave you to figure it all out. But I am happy to help, if you are a thriving company doing something in this space. Let me know in the comments.