Two quarters ago, Apple saw its sales numbers in China crashed. I wrote that Apple was making a mistake, thinking that its customers did not have choices as it continued to misfire on “pricing“. With its attitude of increasing prices, Apple customers left in droves in China. Apple paid the price with lower market share!

In this world, you can do many things in the market. But one thing I will suggest you do not do is to assume that your customers and consumers are stupid. Yes, we get into that phase where we think we can do anything and get away with it. People, it does not work that way. The last time Apple reported earnings, it was the most capitalized private company on earth. Today, it has lost hundreds of billions of dollars on market value.

What was Apple’s problem? It misfired on its pricing. And when that happened, customers revolted, leaving the one oasis in the company (the iPhone) and sales dropped 15%. Apple made an increasingly commoditized product category a fashionista product, putting the cost of iPhone out of the reach of many people.

The drop on iPhone sales was not going to hurt just on monetary terms, the planned transition into services (which grew 19% to a record $10.9bn for quarter ended 31 December) depends on more people using the devices since services win on volume. That explains why Apple wants to lower prices so that it can get many devices out of the stores. In most markets, Apple had already re-priced iPhone to make the device affordable for customers.

Fast forward to last quarter, Apple made some changes. Yes, Apple reduced the prices on iPhone and in the process stabilized China iPhone sales. The results were not clearly pretty—profits and revenues fell, and iPhone sales dropped by 17%, their sharpest decline ever—but executives said price cuts in China led to a pickup toward the end of the quarter, sending shares up more than 10% in after-hours trading, as reported by Quartz.

The company announced its second-quarter earnings today (April 30). Wall Street had been expecting Apple to generate around $54.77 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to Nasdaq—in fact it posted $58.02 billion. While investors will likely be pleased that Apple came in above expectations, that revenue figure is still a drop of about 5% over the same period last year, when the company generated $61.1 billion.

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The iPhone has been Apple’s cash cow for over a decade now. As Apple has struggled to break into emerging markets like China and India, where brand loyalty is less important than value for money, it has had to find new ways to generate additional cash from existing customers. For the past three years, its services business—which includes sales of apps, games, movies, music, cloud storage, and Apple Pay fees—has been the company’s second-largest business. Services have eclipsed sales of Macs, iPads, and everything else the company sells beside phones.

The company’s strategy on services is also paying off. Largely, if Apple reduces prices of hardware, it can get the products in the hands of many to grow the service revenue.

Nigeria’s Tizeti has unveiled an unlimited voice service app. The differentiator ahead of WhatsApp which offers the same service is this: “Unlike WhatsApp, WifiCall subscribers can call any phone number in the world, using their data package”. These companies are simply bringing my prediction that immersive connectivity is coming very fast in Africa well on track: yes 2022.

Nigerian ISP leader Tizeti has launched an unlimited voice service app for Android and iOS mobile devices – WifiCall.ng. Targeted at both individuals and businesses, users will be able to make and receive crystal clear, unlimited voice calls to anywhere in the world via IP phones or web portal. The new product from Tizeti will be rolled out for Nigerian mobile phone numbers initially and subscribers  with a +234 line will be able to use the service from anywhere in the world.

Built by the Tizeti team to tackle the issue of expensive phone calls on the continent, WifiCall is a first for not only the Nigerian ISP space but the African ISP space, providing users with a versatile, user-friendly interface, giving them access to a modern version of the “yellow pages”. Implementation of the WifiCall platform is expected to reduce calling costs for businesses by 30-50%, with monthly subscriptions starting from N6,000 [$16.67] a month.

Unlike WhatsApp, WifiCall subscribers can call any phone number in the world, using their data package. For businesses WifiCall allows ease of a variety of client services and internal communications.

Key product features for the WiFiCall app include

• Customisable dashboard

• Calling statistics

• Personalised digital receptionist messages for multi-line requirements whereby companies can create and manage queues

• One click phone number search + search engine of business phone numbers

• Subscribers can select their own number

• Multi-user sub-account management with ability to top up online and allocate call credits to users.

• Management of users within a calling space

The service comes with a number of additional innovative features, such as allowing mobile users to place calls directly from Twitter by tweeting phone numbers to @wificallng while on the social network, a feature developed with SMEs in mind, so they can provide seamless customer service. Looking to make sure tech platforms can build services around the WifiCall product, developers will have access to the API suite within the platform, to tailor product-based solutions for businesses. This extends past the wide variety of features already on offer across web and mobile including the ability to top-up credit online, allocate call credit to multiple users as well as create digital receptionists and queues.

From press statement

Our partners and major distributors are now having access to Zenvus Loci. Reach out to our team if your partnership has been completed. Loci is a disposable or reusable package GPS that you can put in a briefcase, cargo, personnel, etc and monitor in real time its location. We see opportunities in tracking the specific cargoes (not just the trucks), ecommerce shipments, security guards, equipment on transit, law enforcement (police, army, etc), human (child, oil workers, etc), luggage (individuals shipping via buses, personal air travel luggage, etc), vehicles (no installation), etc. It is cheaper than anything in the market and it is rechargeable with USB.