AFRICAN MOBILE/CELL PHONE SERVICES MARKET

AFRICAN MOBILE/CELL PHONE SERVICES MARKET Introduction The mobile/cell phone services market in Africa, especially southern Africa, can be defined as a latent market with huge growth potential.

AFRICAN MOBILE/CELL PHONE SERVICES MARKET

However, there are huge challenges in terms of the lack of infrastructure and the ability of many in the market to pay, which means it is a highly challenging market. Anyone entering the market needs to develop a thorough understanding of the complexities of the African marketing environment in which they are competing and decide how to segment the market, which segment to target, and how to develop a positioning strategy to achieve competitive leverage. Market information Penetration across the continent will reach 50 % of subscribers by 2020 from 2 % in the late 2000s. Africa is in the grip of a mobile/cell phone revolution. In the past 15 years, subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa have risen from 72,000 to 329 million (GSMA 2014). While many rural villagers huddle around paraffin lamps as darkness falls, neon lights come to life as they illuminate the mobile/cell phone masts proliferating across the African landscape. According to Mobile Africa, the number of mobile/cell phone subscriptions far exceeds fixed-line subscriptions. The International Telecommunication Union reckons that more Africans have begun using phones since the late 2000s than in the whole of the previous century! The use of mobile/cell phones is increasing at an annual rate of 7 %, more than twice the global average. Thanks to rising living standards, the middle class in Africa has tripled since the late 1980s, and the continent’s working-age population will double from 500 million today to 1.1 billion in 2040. Africa’s annual output is growing by approximately 5 % (adjusted for purchasing power parity), twice as fast as in the period from the mid-2000s and faster than the global average. Foreign direct investment to the region increased from US$10 billion to US$88 billion – more than India (US$42 billion) and, even more remarkably, catching up with China (US$108 billion). The Boston Consulting Group notes that the revenues of Africa’s 500 largest companies (excluding banks) have grown at an average of 8.3 % a year since the late 2000s. Consumer goods companies ranging from Western giants such as Procter & Gamble to emerging market cars companies such as China’s Great Wall and India’s Tata Motors are pouring into Africa. Foreign firms are starting to use Africa as a base for manufacturing as well, as labor costs in India and China rise. The mobile/cell phone market has been an integral part of this growth. In Africa, the average penetration of mobile/cell phones stands at nearly half the population, and in North Africa, it is almost two-thirds. Gabon, Seychelles, and South Africa now boast almost 100 % penetration. Only five African countries – Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia- pia, and Somalia – still have a penetration rate of less than 25 per 100 inhabitants. Uganda, the first African country to have more mobiles/ cells than fixed telephones, is cited as an example of cultural and economic transformation. Penetration has risen from 0.2 % in the late 2000s to 30 % now, with operators making huge investments in infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. Given their low incomes, only about a quarter of Ugandans have a mobile/cell subscription, but street vendors offer mobile/cell access on a per-call basis. They also invite those without access to electricity to charge their phones using car batteries. Popular mobile services include money transfers, allowing people without bank accounts to send money by text message. Many farmers use mobiles/cells to trade and check market prices. Internet technologies Mobile Internet technologies play a very important role in making Internet services available to many in Africa. Africans are using them for more than calling their friends and family. Many are using them to do their banking. About half a million South Africans now use their mobile/cell phones as a bank. For these new banking customers, both the mobile/cell phone and the whole system of banking are new to them. Traditional banks offer mobile banking as an added service to existing customers, most of whom are quite well off. Wizzit, and to some extent, First National Bank (FNB) and MTN Banking, are chasing another market: the 16 million South Africans, over half of the adult population, with no bank account. Significantly, 30% of these people do have mobile/cell phones. Previously ignored as the bottom of the pyramid and of little commercial importance to large corporations, such customers are now being courted. Wizzit hired and trained over 2000 unemployed people, known as Wizzkids, to drum up business. It worked: eight out of ten Wizzit customers previously had no bank account and had never used an ATM. A simplified kind of account called Mzansi has been launched to reach non-banking customers, and portable banks and ATMs have been rolled out in townships and in the countryside. In most of Africa, only a fraction of people have bank accounts – but there is a huge demand for cheap and convenient ways to send money and buy prepaid services such as airtime. In Kenya, a pilot scheme called M-Pesa is being used to disburse and pay micro-loans by phone. Meanwhile, Celpay is offering platforms for banks and phone companies in Zambia and Congo. By clicking a few keys on a mobile/cell phone, money can be zapped from one part of Kenya to another in seconds. For urban migrants sending money home to their villages and for people used to queuing at banks for hours to pay bills or school fees, the M-Pesa money-transfer service, operated by Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile/cell operator, is a godsend. It is used by 17 million people, or over half the population, and transfers the equivalent of almost 50 % of Kenya’s GDP each year. The most ambitious is Africa’s biggest operator, MTN, which is rolling out mobile-money schemes in several African countries. Together with five other providers, it has opened up the Ugandan market, where users of the service have increased from 10,000 in the late 2000s to 19 million now. Market challenges There are many difficulties on the way. Not all potential consumers are ready to make the leap. Many think banking is too expensive and complicated, and helping new customers become financially literate takes time. The technology remains a problem in some cases, with downloads requiring dozens of text messages. Several rival platforms are still in the fight. But so far, those that emphasize simplicity and ease of use over state-of-the-art technology and security have made the greatest strides. A lot also hangs on putting the right laws and regulations in place. They need to be tight enough to protect vulnerable users and discourage money laundering but open enough to allow innovative mobile banking to grow. However, the main barrier to further expansion remains the cumbersome regulatory frameworks. Countries with similar economic circumstances but with a liberalized market generally show higher penetration rates. Taxes can also act as a barrier, particularly import duties on handsets or special mobile communications surcharges. The mobile industry has been seen as a cash cow by governments in some countries that have used its popularity to generate tax revenues but have not invested in the infrastructure for its growth. To expand coverage into rural and remote areas, government support will be required. Rural areas in some countries are also often economically unattractive for operators to invest in. This is usually not due to a lack of demand but rather to a lack of basic infrastructure. The cost of making calls and sending texts in Africa is also relatively high, and many of its countries are poor. In South Africa and Kenya, running a mobile/cell phone costs the average user 5 % of a monthly income. Yet in countries such as Malawi and Central African Republic, average monthly mobile/cell costs are as much as 50 % of average monthly earnings. Big chunks of some markets remain unreachable because of this. A ‘digital divide’ also persists in terms of Internet access, but this is changing, too, as Internet penetration has passed 20 % in Africa. Because of the lack of availability of fixed lines, mobile broadband accounts for 90% of Internet subscriptions and so Internet access in Africa is much more dependent on the penetration of smartphones. The task

1. Analyze and evaluate the major environmental influences that will impact the growth of the mobile/cell phone services market.

2. Building on the results of your analysis from Question 1, and with reference to a company of your choice, draw up a market profile analysis for the area.

3. Propose and justify an effective segmentation strategy for the African market that will form the basis on which a company of your choice can build a regional marketing strategy. This should form the basis on which the company you have chosen can enter and develop the market.

4. For the company referred to in Question 2, show how the company should develop some of the segments identified. What are the challenges and problems they will face, and how should they respond to these challenges?