Apple Incorporated has finally announced its official entry into Nigeria’s highly competitive mobile device market.
The smartphone maker, with reported revenue of $108 billion in 2011, at the weekend appointed four authorised resellers in Nigeria.
The resellers are: iConnect (Lagos), Meed Networks (Abuja), Orchard (Lagos) and Cross-Energy Supply (Abuja) - all fully equipped and positioned to provide customers with best-in-class service support. Apple is banking on its extended market presence and an increasing demand for smartphones to increase its market share in Nigeria and Africa generally.
For years now, Apple devices have been sold in the Nigerian market through unauthorised channels. Taryn Hyam, corporate communications manager, Southern Africa for Apple told Business Day in an interview, that Nigeria was a vital market for the firm in Africa. According to her, Apple Incorporated was engaged in discussions to further expand its distribution network in Nigeria, enabling more customers’ access world-class service delivery. “We want to provide the world-class support to our customers.
“We are also offering a two-year warranty for only customers who purchase devices from authorised resellers.” She told Business Day that Apple was considering entering strategic partnership with leading telecommunications companies in Nigeria to further expand the scope of Nigeria’s device market. What’s more, network operators such as MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat for some time now have been bundling Apple devices with innovative data packages. This activity, she pointed out was going on through “unauthorised channels”.
Market watchers told Business Day, that operators may have decided to gone down this route because of the opportunity that existed in terms of access to Apple products and solutions. More importantly, analysts argue that voice revenues are declining and operators are keenly looking at how to generate more revenue from data services.
The company through Core Group Africa, its Value Added Distributor (VAD) in Nigeria, also announced that the new iPad is officially available locally from the starting price of just N105,000 (one hundred and five thousand Naira) only.
The new iPad is now available in Nigeria as part of the next global rollout by Apple. This is the first time it will be available through the official Apple channel in Nigeria. The new iPad Wi-Fi and iPad Wi-Fi + Cellular** will be available in black or white in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB models. It features a stunning new Retina display, Apple’s new A5X chip with quad-core graphics and a 5 megapixel iSight camera with advanced optics for capturing amazing photos and 1080p HD video.
The new iPad delivers the same all-day 10 hour battery life, is amazingly thin and light and runs almost all of the over 650, 000 apps on the iTunes App Store. It provides the most versatile, on-the-go user experience whether checking email at home, reading a magazine while waiting in a queue, watching a movie on a plane, updating documents before a meeting, checking sport fixtures, uploading a Facebook status, or sharing a bedtime story.
“Apple’s category defining mobile device, the new iPad, has revolutionised the mobile computing industry and delivers the most amazing experience people have ever had with technology. We are thrilled to make this unbelievable product available to Nigerians”, said Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk, executive director of Core Group Africa. Core Group Africa has appointed Apple Authorised Resellers to ensure the product is available through official channel partners.
A full list of Apple Authorised Resellers will be available on www.isocietynigeria.com and will be updated as new official channel partners are added. Core Group Africa is including an unbelievable benefit for Nigerian customers during the launch period - an additional years warranty free of charge.
The extra year of warranty extends the standard warranty to a 2 year period for new iPads that are sold by Core Group Africa through Apple Authorised Resellers. In order to qualify, customers must provide proof of purchase from an Apple Authorised Reseller from the official launch date and must register their iPad on www.isocietynigeria.com. Any additional terms and conditions are listed on the www.isocietynigeria.com website.
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