years have passed
through a phase of meaning fake cheap
phones to meaning
phones with same features with the world's
best phones like Samsung, iPhones, Motorola etc at a cheaper
price.
It was April 2004 that I personally came across
the first china
phone in Nigeria, the time at which people
have embraced cell phones in Nigeria and demanded more
features from the
popular mobile phones available then like
Nokia, Samsung,
Eriksson, Siemens etc.
My first encounter with a china phone was on a bus shuttling
from Mile 2 to somewhere within the Apapa
axis of Lagos State,
Nigeria. We were held up in little packets of
traffic stops and the
midday heat was making me and just about everyone else egdy,
then enters a deafening sound that startled
almost everyone, it
was so loud and disturbing that the thought of
the sound coming
from a phone was unfathomed. The mystery was immediately
resolved when this middle aged man pulled
out the "noise
source" from his pocket, ended the noise, and
preceded with a
"hello"……. This was the first time i had heard a phone ring that
loud. Its sound was unconventionally loud and
the sound quality
harsh. On close examination, i found the name
of the phone to
be "NOKIQ" written in semblance to one of the most powerful
brands NOKIA. The screen was large but the
graphic user
interface was very sharp on the contrast and
brightness. Long
story short, it looked like poor imitation of a product that was
already on the market. This marked the ever
first phase of china
phones in Nigeria .
These phones were cheap, they look like a
sham, but they were very efficient. These phones even dared to
posses features that
their European and American counterparts
didn't. Features like
dual SIM slots, and local Chinese games. One
thing was certain. These new kids on the block meant business.
They had acquired,
they were imitating and where bent on
overtaking their more
recognized rivals.
Most of the china phones in Nigeria at the time were made by
rogue companies who were in the business
strictly for piracy.
Phone names like SAMSONG, ERIKSSQN and
NOKING were the
most common Chinese imitations available; of course the names
were deliberately spelt wrong so as to avoid
the appropriate
authorities.
It was a catch with low income earners. But
some Nigerians for reasons of poor aesthetic qualities stayed away
from these
Chinese phones. It was for some a social taboo
to be found with
these phones.
A year later enters what appeared to be a game changer. A new
breed of branded Chinese phones began to
flood the Nigerian
market. They looked smart and more refined
and not forgetting
that their phones now came with a pack of complete accessories
that had a more comprehensive user manual
that wasn't all
written in mandarin.
The Ningbo Bird company founded in 1992
was ahead of the pack having won several awards in China
including "The China
Famous Brand" award in 2003. Bird phones
like the S288, S1160,
S1160 plus and S1186 were instant favorites.
There was still a very mild sense of imitation in terms of phone
build but you had
to credit their competitive perseverance to play
with the big kids
on the block. More Nigerians began to
reconsider their once choleric view of these china phones to a more
accommodating
one. These phones once known for bad
quality began to have
some semblance of professionalism. Most
people then don't consider such phones as china phones as it
was then settled that
the name china phone means cheap fake
phones which a brand
like bird was not, so it was not considered a
"china phone". Meanwhile other Chinese phone makers who
were still in the
business of piracy started making bolder
statements in terms of
how ruthless they would attack their victims.
Their phones would now be identical in build and carry the
exact same brand
name of their-would be prey. Nokia and
Samsung where hit the
hardest. Other chiness phone makes came into
the show and starting making similar phones to those
making imitations but
they carried their own indigenous names like
Tecno , iTel etc.
But most of these phones even with their
suppose cool features can still be identified as china fake phones with
very harsh loud
sounds, no internal memory as most will have
just 200kb
internal storage. This marked the second
phase of china phones in Nigeria.
Fast-forward several years later when smart
phones would
make a debut in Nigeria, china phones didn't
take long to
respond to the challenge. While the whole world was being
wowed by the vicious tech-war between the
likes of Apple,
Samsung, LG, and Motorola. China phones
weren't that far
behind. As usual they started out making poor imitations of
already existing smart phones.
The transition from making poor imitations to
actually coming
up with something indigenous didn't take long
owing to the facts
that first of all, the most popular operating
system for smart phones. The Google Android was Open Source meaning that
anyone could use use/manipulate the OS
without fears of being
hunted down for piracy. This would save the
time and cost it
would take to develop an operating system which was the most
difficult thing to do on a smart phone at the
time. This marks the
third phase of china phones in Nigeria.
Secondly, Many Chinese powerhouses that
were already a household name in the supply of
telecommunication equipment
began to venture into the smart phone
industry. Huawei, ZTE
Cooperation, HTC, and Lenovo Cooperation
were financially capable to undertake the smart phone
challenge. And they did it
superbly. They were now able to match the
firepower of their
western and Korean/Japanese competitors.
Soon other Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Tecno Mobile , Infinix,
Innjoo and Gionee
joined the smart phone race and have been
very successful as
most Nigerians now have come to embrace the
fact that just because it's a china phone doesn't make it a
fake phone. Now
about 3 out of every 5 Smart Phones in Nigeria
are made by
Chinese companies.
It's been more than a decade since these phones took the
Nigerian market by storm. From being the
rejected stone to
being the chief cornerstone. Currently pushing
big names like
Blackberry, Nokia and Motorola almost out of the market.
They came. They saw and they indeed
conquered.
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