Chinese brands have continued to flood and dominate the Nigerian market with over 300 models in the last 15 years as the number of phones approved for sale in the country by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) increased to 1,985 as of April 2023.
According to the latest report by NCC, 24 new phone models were approved between January and now. As of January, the figure was 1,961 before hitting 1,985 in April.
Some of these phone brands include Tecno Mobile, Nokia, Wiko, Samsung, Panasonic, Huawei, Asus, Apple, HP, Google, Gionee, Alcatel, Oppo among others. However, there are other brands from countries including Finland, France, America, India, Japan, Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, South Africa and UAE.
With huge capital flights almost daily, none of these foreign brands have been committed to having a manufacturing plant in Nigeria. Painfully, the indigenous operator, AfriOne struggles to stay afloat in the country.
As of February 2020, type–approved phones were 1,492, it rose to 1,843 in April 2022 and 1,891 as of November 2022.
Despite the regulatory efforts of the NCC to establish and enforce standards for all telecommunications equipment in operation in Nigeria to ensure that they operate seamlessly and safely within the Nigerian telecommunications environment thousands of unapproved phone brands are still being sold across the country.
While the unapproved phones are in most cases sub-standard or fake, they sell faster than the approved ones as they are sold at cheaper prices.
However, the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof Umar Danbatta, has given a stern warning to Nigerians not to buy any phone that has not been certified for the market by the regulator.
He said, “The menace of counterfeit and substandard handsets has assumed a global dimension and requires a lot of education on the part of the consumers and collaboration with other government agencies to address it.”
“Cases of influx and patronage of counterfeit handsets are more rampant in developing countries, such as Nigeria, where importers bring in substandard phones without recourse to the regulatory type-approval process aimed at certifying such devices as fit for the market.”
Meanwhile, Africa’s smartphone market declined for the sixth consecutive quarter in Q4 2022, with shipments down 17.8 per cent year on year (YoY) to 17.6 million units. That’s according to the insights from International Data Corporation (IDC), with the firm’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker showing that Africa’s feature phone market also declined in Q4 2022, with shipments down 16.2 per cent to total 22.7 million units.