Steve Evans, CEO, Etisalat Nigeria, says it is working with global phone manufacturers to aid the development of the mobile broadband ecosystem in Nigeria, by bringing down the average prices of Smartphones below the $50-barrier.
In the last two years, Smartphone prices have indeed crashed, but average costs are still about $100.
Evans, who spoke with Business Day in an interview at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday, said Etisalat was fully aware that majority of Nigeria’s over 90 million phone subscribers access the internet through their mobile phones.
Statistics have already shown that 70 percent of Nigerian mobile users visit social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter, while 65 percent use their mobile phones for e-mail.
In October 2011, Etisalat rolled out a customised 3G-enabled Smartphone running on the android Operating System (OS), which according to Evans still remains the cheapest Smartphone in the country.
However, Evans said Etisalat was already in discussions with equipment manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress to find other ways of making available a wide range of affordable Smartphone to the broader Nigerian population.
For the Etisalat CEO, his company is keenly interested in offering dual SIM phones to Nigerian customers, disclosing that “we have been meeting the handset manufacturers and saying what is the next step in Smartphone.
How can we make Smartphone available to an even bigger section of the population in Nigeria by bringing down price points? “We also think that having a dual SIM phone if you are in Etisalat Nigeria is not something to be afraid of.
We are quite happy to have competitors SIM in the second slot because it is more convenient for our customers.”
BusinessD
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