NAIROBI: When Huawei assistant director for Africa expansion Wang Liu talked about developing a cheap Android phone for the African market, he knew it would be successful. But after the Chinese company launched the IDEOS phone earlier this year via Kenya's Safaricom, the results were not expected to be this great. “We knew it would be successful and thought it would take some time to get moving, but the statistics coming in are amazing,” Liu said. According to Safaricom, the $80 Android phone has been sold to over 350,000. That is a staggering statistic considering nearly half of Kenya's population lives on less than two dollars per day. Liu said the key to the success was to bring the price down so it would be affordable to the growing middle-class in Kenya. When they were able to do that, joining with Safaricom was the solution to their distribution needs. “We knew that if we could get the price down and make it cheap enough for people to get, lots would get out there because Android and smartphones are the future and people want the latest technology,” Liu said from Shanghai. Kenya's mobile market is booming and with the economy growing at some five percent annually, Huawei expects more and more Androids to be purchased in the coming months. BM
