How China’s Simi Mobile is conquering Africa, one country at a time
- Budget phone maker Simi Mobile recorded total revenue of US$39 million in 2018
- In the first quarter of this year, Africa’s smartphone shipments declined 7.1 per cent quarter on quarter but were up 5.6 per cent year on year to 21.5 million units
When Ares Chow Yuqing decided to strike out on his own after working 10 years at a number of domestic Chinese mobile phone suppliers, he looked to a country few of his fellow entrepreneurs would ever think of going: Ethiopia
In 2013 Chow established his new business in the northern African country, where he began importing and selling semi-knocked down (SKD) kits for smartphones. When the government introduced a rule restricting the sale of imported phones, Chow turned a potential set back into an opportunity.
“Ethiopia has the second largest population in Africa, and most importantly, it set a threshold which required locally established factory to sell [smartphones] in the country,” Chow, CEO of Simi Mobile, said in an interview at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters.
Chow’s decision to establish a local factory in Ethiopia came around the same time that smartphone consumption was exploding in China, with domestic brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and Huawei starting to dominate the market. Hundreds of knock-off phone brands, mostly from Shenzhen where Chow established Simi, also mushroomed to tap demand from users who wanted a mobile phone but were strapped for cash.
The decision by the Ethiopian government effectively blocked the hundreds of cheap Chinese-made knock-off phone brands that were eyeing the same market as Chow, enabling Simi to compete with fewer rivals by selling products produced by its own factory.
