What Nigerian mobile operators can learn from UScounterparts

IN every mobile market, the customer is actually becoming
king. Thank God for the open platform which android
brings that has opened up opportunity for mobile Original
Equipment Manufacturers, OEMs, to manufacture phones

with similar features irrespective of status and financial
muscles.
The only areas class and budget would show in many of
the mobile phones in the market today are just on design
and architecture. In essence, every phone seems to
operate the same, do the same things even though they
may not look or feel the same.
But in what the low budget OEMs may lose in the design
and architecture competition, they mostly gain in the
affordability contest.
Now this affordability contest is what the OEMs in
developed markets seem to go in alliance with mobile
operators to compete. The mobile operators themselves
appear to need the collaboration to retain their
subscribers in the ever increasing dwindling ARPU time
they are experiencing at the moment.
Although this alliance is not happening with great
momentum in Nigeria and other emerging markets, it still
holds great prospects of seeing major mobile OEMs who
only bring boxes into the Nigerian market, considering it a
profitable venture to manufacture in the country.
This also means that the Nigerian telecom operators
should begin to plan big on how to use new and latest
smartphones to boost their customer base rather than
engaging in anti-competitive tendencies which most often
have seen them being heavily fined by the regulator.
Right now in the United States of America, operators are
battling each other to secure market share for Apple’s
latest phones, which were released earlier last week.
While market leaders Verizon and AT&T have unveiled
relatively moderate offers, long-term foes Sprint and T-
Mobile US, in typical fashion, are once again trying to
outdo each other.
Both companies last week released low-cost leasing plans
for the devices, showing the apparent importance Apple’s
latest product release has on both companies’ subscriber
numbers.
Sprint, in its latest attempt to claw back market share
after losing the country’s number three spot by
connections to T-Mobile US earlier this year, unveiled an
offer allowing customers to lease the new iPhone 6s at
just $1 a month.
The deal, which trumped T-Mobile US’ similar $5 a month
offer announced on Wednesday, gives new and existing
customers the chance to trade in their current iPhone 6
for the new device, as long as it’s been paid off in full.
The low cost plans could also convince customers to
continue to get their devices from their network provider,
irrespective of the fact that Apple also released its own
iPhone leasing programme.