Africa’s mobile phone market, the fastest-growing in the
world, is the last frontier for the industry with the promise of unlocked
riches luring global interest including from Chinese handset makers.
But
there are two significant challenges in Africa, according to industry leaders
and analysts at the world’s biggest mobile fair in Barcelona, Spain: lowering
prices for handsets and services and boosting a patchy network.
The use
of mobiles is exploding among the one billion people in Africa, where landline
networks are poorly developed. Many people rely on the devices for financial
transactions — Africa is a leader in the use of “mobile money” — or to link to
the Internet.
“Africa
is the last frontier of mobile telephony in the world,” said Manoj Kohli, chief
executive of Indian group Bharti Airtel, which has a big presence in the
continent.
“But it
is tough to maintain a network,” he added.
According
to global consultants PwC, the number of mobile telephone subscriptions in
Africa exploded from 16 million in 2000 to 246 million in 2008 and more than
500 million now.
It
expects there to be 600 million subscribers by 2016.
Many
Africans have two SIM cards to profit from cheaper calls on each network,
however, and industry analyst Wireless Intelligence estimates only a little
over one third of the population actually had a mobile telephone in the second
quarter of 2012.
Average
revenue per consumer in Burundi, Rwanda or Egypt was about $5 (3.80 euros) a
month, it said. Price is a challenge for handset manufacturers, too.
Chinese
manufacturer Huawei this month launched a sleek new smartphone adapted for
Africa, the 4Afrika, running on Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system and
with a four-inch screen.
Adapted
for each market, the Nigerian version has a dictionary for the local Yoruba
language and local news, along with an application related to the popular
low-budget movie industry, called Nollywood.
It is
expected to sell for less than $200, a Microsoft executive said, with the first
devices being offered as early as this month in Angola, Egypt, Ivory Coast,
Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria and South Africa.
According
to PwC, total investment in fixed and mobile networks in Africa should rise
from $78.8 billion in 2008 to $145.9 billion by 2015.
Extending
coverage to rural areas means bridging long distances but also requires energy,
and the electrical grid is often unreliable or nonexistent, industry players
said. Operators often resort to costly solutions such as solar panels or diesel
generators.
Sifiso
Dabengwa, chief executive of South African operator MTN, the leader on the
continent, said the challenge was to provide a network from one end of the the
chain to the other. Fierce competition for African customers was hurting
profits, he added.
“Five
or six operators in a country makes it a difficult market for us,” he said,
accusing some players of charging at below cost and urging consolidation in the
sector. Some operators, including Barthi Airtel’s Kohli, called for players to
share infrastructure so as to ensure coverage of the continent and to have any
chance of offering Africans third generation fast networks, let alone the
superfast fourth-generation.
“We
cannot duplicate networks. Only Americans and Europeans can do that, not
Africans,” he warned.
By Agence France-Presse
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