We’ll revolutionise Nigerians’ interaction with mobile technology —DGM, Tecno Nigeria

 Akin Adewakun-Lagos


In this interview, Deputy General Manager, Tecno Nigeria, Mr Chidi Okonkwo, explains that the company’s newly launched Phantom Z Smartphone and its proposed mobile phone manufacturing plant in Nigeria are part of the company’s strategies to bring quality phones to Nigerians at affordable prices.

 Excerpts.

Why are you introducing a new smartphone into the market considering the array of offerings in that market segment and the increase in the number of holes in the average Nigerian’s pocket?


To start with, the new Phantom Z is different. It is a huge product, coming with a lot of innovations: a mega pixel camera, with a dual flash and the front camera, having  about eight-pixel camera.  Besides being handy, it also has a 3030mAH battery that can deliver 24 hours of talk time, with up to 960 hours of standby time on 3G network. We believe the new product is going to change the way we interact with mobile devices in this part of the globe.

But are there incentives, such as a swap process for those buying the phone now?

Right now we do not have a swap process. What we do is that if you have a defective Tecno and we do not have accessories to fix it, we can replace this model with another model.

So if we don’t have accessories for a model, we can swap the model for a newer version.

Cost of data on Android phone has always been a challenge for Android phone users.  How do you intend to deal with that?

I believe it’s going to improve. Competition in the market will improve prices. We hope that the in the nearest future, customers will enjoy lower data rate with the competition that is getting keener in the country right now.  The mobile operators are the  providers of data in the country and every day, we see  that prices are being forced down, and we hope that customers will enjoy more of this in the nearest future.

But what is the cost implication of the new product and how does Tecno give back to its operating environment?

For the new product, I may not be able to give you the recommended retail price right now. But I’m very sure it will be affordable considering the premium features that it has, it’s not going to rip your pocket. It will come at a very affordable rate. On our CSR, we are doing a lot now.  We have sponsored a lot of activities, but the fact remains that we are not making noise about these things that we engage in. For instance, we have been supporting the motherless babies’ homes. In December last year, I visited between three to four homes and donated quite a number of materials to these homes. We also sponsored some campus pageants. Last year, we also supported App developers in the country, where we brought together a number of app developers and put forward an app challenge. The winners of this challenge actually got cash prizes and other prizes from us. We are also involved in some community sanitation initiatives. For instance, we hope to install solar street lamps around our business communities. And this project would be completed before the end of the year.

Besides the new product, what other plans do you have for the Nigerian mobile market?

There are a lot of investment projects we are embarking on in the country currently, and setting up a mobile manufacturing factory here is one of them. We’ve already acquired a huge space in Lekki, and the feasibility study is ongoing. We believe this would help our vision of delivering quality mobile phones to Nigerians at affordable prices.

What are the terms of your partnership with  Jumia, an online shopping  platform?

Jumia is one of the foremost retail stores in the country and we are providing mobile phones that would enable our customers if they want to shop online, they can use our devices to do that. So, we are collaborating with Jumia to advance our cause in Nigeria; we are providing the platform for e-commerce to thrive and Jumia is an online retail store in the country and we hope that this partnership would grow.