China Telcoms giant Huawei to set up shop in Kenya

By Macharia Kamau

Chinese telecoms services provider, Huawei, plans to start retailing its products in Kenya in the coming months. The firm has begun recruiting distributors for its products, and plans to have its products in shelves by end of year.

Until now, Huawei had operated a business-to-business model, selling its solutions to telecommunications firms in the country, who in turn sell the products to consumers. A number of these products — such as infrastructure equipment — are tailored for use by the telcos themselves. Other products include mobile handsets, Internet modems and tablets that are distributed into the market by mobile operators, with whom Huawei has partnerships.

The new business to consumer approach will see the firm become more visible in Kenya, and will intensify competition in the mobile handset business.

"The distributors will sell a wide range of products that we have, and not just handsets. But we see a big opportunity in smart phones, as the mobile telephony industry is yet to achieve a 100 per cent penetration, and subscribers will always be looking to upgrade their handsets with those that have advanced features," said Huawei’s Chief Operating Officer, Radoslaw Kedzia.

The company expects to grow its handset business in Kenya, as it eyes the tablet market, which is still in its infant stages in the country.

Ideos tablet

It currently has the Ideos phone and Ideos S7 Slim tablet, currently resold by Safaricom. The Ideos cell phone is a low cost smart phone launched in the country early this year, and the company says it is already the most popular smart phone in the country at the moment, having sold in excess of 100,000 units as of last week.

Kedzia said there are plans to launch more products targeted at local consumers in the coming months to cash in on the growth of ICT in the country.

It is keen on capturing the mobile telephony handset segment, with its relatively low priced handsets as well as the tablet segment.

The tablet, a seeming fusion of the laptop and the cell phone, is yet to gain popularity in Kenya but Kedzia said it is a matter of time before the global tablet craze caught on in Kenya.