This is it – Samsung Galaxy 10. It is a new basis of competition as it created a parallel pioneering foldable built. Apple has a wake-up call right now. This phone is nothing but cheap – it is fashionista at another level.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VXV15T3vJw
I got the notes and questions: how can you posit that Nigeria is the best place to invest as I noted in the piece on my BBC interview? My answer: few things work in Nigeria, and that means it has the biggest problems to be solved in the world. Provided that is the state, we can extrapolate that latent opportunities abound in the nation.
Getting ready for BBC interview – the stage is set. I will share insights on the following: (1) Nigeria is the best place to invest. (2) Entrepreneurial capitalism is unlocking new vistas in Nigeria, seeding new possibilities in this Cambrian moment. (3) My entrepreneurial journey and building a diversified digital conglomerate. If you are looking for someone with undeniable optimistic exuberance about Nigeria, you have seen Ndubuisi Ekekwe.
Good people, if someone asks you to come up with a business plan in London, I am not sure you can find something you can fix easily. I mean an open friction which has not been effectively managed.
Fix a Friction: Frictions exist in markets and because of those frictions we have the need for companies. Those frictions are the market needs which companies are created to solve and fix. As an entrepreneur, your main job is to find frictions which are prevalent in markets and which affect many people and companies. For example, in Nigeria, we have a friction in the inadequacy of electricity. It affects many people and companies and certainly something that needs to be fixed.
But in Nigeria, there are acres of diamonds everywhere. From our food systems to our healthcare systems, from our road systems to our power systems, from our educational systems to our aviation and indeed everything, you see frictions everywhere. That is why Nigeria is the best place to invest. And that does not mean that it is the easiest place to make money.
For that last one, talk to Dangote, Ovia and Elumelu to help you. All I know is that Nigeria has latent opportunities to mint new generation of business leaders who can be bold to fix all these challenges we have. Our nation remains a place where women die during child births needlessly because the closest hospital to her is about 3 hours away.
The good Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe is right. I just returned from a trip to Nigeria and the unsolved problems I saw there were amazing to me. Capital is often but not always the main impediment.
With big problems do come big opportunities. And Nigeria is a land of great opportunity. Ironically, the very reasons that these massive opportunities (problems) exist are the problems (opportunities) themselves: the difficulty of doing business, the infrastructural problems, all the things that scare your typical cookie cutter out-of-the-can investor. Indeed these problems are a real barrier to entry, and they make it difficult to engage or be interested in that country of 200 million people (400 million by 2050).
I expect our investors to be pleased when I debrief them on my trip. Nigeria has enormous potential, and each of those pesky problems is a great opportunity waiting to be seized.
When no unsolved problems remain, that is called heaven. It also means one is physically dead. While still alive and breathing, we have opportunity to solve the problems that make life difficult for others. And that’s how to live.
The fastest growing market in the African consulting sector is now Digital Transformation. This includes amalgam of many things including pure digitization of processes, integrating digital tools in marketing, and preparing data for the AI future. Yet, where you can command more respect and add the greatest values (which means close deals faster) is figuring out how your frameworks, or other people’s frameworks modified by you, can help Boards and Executive Management find growths. Those frameworks are the key elements of Digital Transformation, and are the most impactful of all services.
If you run a consulting practice, the most important phase in any engagement is understanding the customer. If you miss that element, you would struggle all through the engagement. To understand a customer, you have to approach everything with a learning spirit irrespective of what you think you are. The fact is this: the customer understands and knows his business more than you.
In my practice, drawing from one of my Harvard Business Review articles, I try to help clients figure out how to embrace the ICT utilities like Facebook and Google over seeing them as enemies, and from there architect growth models to unlock new markets and territories. In the consumer business, digital business development that does not look at these ICT utilities may not be optimal because Facebook is a business continent, and Google is another, even though your Geography class may not list them as among the planets!
Always remember that being #1 in a dying industry is an existential threat even though you are #1. So, in a sector, if a company is #1 but not growing and other competitors are exiting, there is nothing to smile about. You are not out-competing them. Rather, they are exiting because the sector is shrinking. If you do not have the antenna to see the trajectory, you will be in trouble very soon.
Our model is to use indicators to figure out how change happens. Yes, most times, it is technology that is transforming sectors, triggering structural dislocations, and shifting values to new class of entities. For example, as Facebook and Google dominate, media companies struggle. So, to help media entities, you must understand that competition within traditional peers is not the challenge anymore: you have to see the flanks to come up with a winning strategy.
Digital transformation is a major shift and it is where the money is right now. Do not focus on the operational aspect – see the strategic phase where you come up with roadmaps to enable CHANGE.
The appropriate way to understand the phrase could be ‘digital TRANSFORMATION’, the transformation is the real deal, the digital is just the enabler.
It largely requires a mind shift, not really about digitizing processes and operations, and most times wasting money on unusable technologies.
So for any digital transformation to make some substantial impact, it must be approached from the strategic level, not tactical/operational, the latter has very little to do with senior management, who ordinarily must lead the transformation journey. Communication is key, especially for organisations with identifiable culture.
Driving the change is never straightforward, because getting the workforce to change from what used to work or how they have always done things, is never easy; you must be able to convince them that the new way is the right way.
As expected, the arrival of 5G will kick off another incremental growth in phone shipment in the developed world. And with the continuous growths in emerging markets, overall phone shipment will go north. So, despite the total worldwide smartphone shipment dropping in 2018, 2019-2022 will experience low digital growths, notes IDC, a consultancy.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to decline by 3% in 2018 before returning to low single-digit growth in 2019 and through 2022. While the on-going U.S.-China trade war has the industry on edge, IDC still believes that continued developments from emerging markets, mixed with potential around 5G and new product form factors, will bring the smartphone market back to positive growth.
Smartphone shipments are expected to drop to 1.42 billion units in 2018, down from 1.47 billion in 2017. However, IDC expects year-over-year shipment growth of 2.6% in 2019. Over the long-term, smartphone shipments are forecast to reach 1.57 billion units in 2022. From a geographic perspective, the China market, which represented 30% of total smartphone shipments in 2017, is finally showing signs of recovery. While the world’s largest market is still forecast to be down 8.8% in 2018 (worse than the 2017 downturn), IDC anticipates a flat 2019, then back to positive territory through 2022. The U.S. is also forecast to return to positive growth in 2019 (up 2.1% year over year) after experiencing a decline in 2018.
Android: Android’s smartphone share will remain stable at 85% throughout the forecast. Volumes are expected to grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.7% with shipments approaching 1.36 billion in 2022. Android is still the choice of the masses with no shift expected. Android average selling prices (ASPs) are estimated to grow by 9.6% in 2018 to US$258, up from US$235 in 2017. IDC expects this upward trajectory to continue through the forecast, but at a softened rate from 2019 and beyond. Not only are market players pushing upgraded specs and materials to offset decreasing replacement rates, but they are also serving the evolving consumer needs for better performance.
iOS: iOS smartphones are forecast to drop by 2.5% in 2018 to 210.4 million. The launch of expensive and bigger screen iOS smartphones in Q3 2018 helped Apple to raise its ASP, simultaneously making it somewhat difficult to increase shipments in the current market slump. IDC is forecasting iPhone shipments to grow at a five-year CAGR of 0.1%, reaching volumes of 217.3 million in 2022. Despite the challenges, there is no ambiguity that Apple will continue to lead the global premium market segment.
I get this question a lot – what phone do you use in Nigeria? They usually come from Nigerians in diaspora who are making more than average trips to our nation. My answer: Tecno – the best phone for the Nigerian mobile airwaves. I bought this phone 3 years ago; possibly, other phones have caught up with Tecno on dual sim feature.
(Do not be surprised – in America, when you pick a phone, you just dial with no need to check if there is a tone. Simply, things work! So, for most, there is a little shock when between 11am-3pm Internet crawls in Lagos Island because of congestion.)
Yes, Tecno had a feature which Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy sold in America did not have then: dual sim cards. (Recently most do now but I am yet to go shopping.) With dual sim cards, I can play the game of poor service more efficiently. MTN has the best coverage across the nation and powers my voice telephony. But 9Mobile offers a premium broadband connectivity which though more expensive is industry-leading on quality and reliability.
So, sim card #1 handles the voice telephony while #2 takes care of mobile internet, saving me many frictions on expecting one network to do both right. Nnamdi Ezeigbo who sold the idea of dual sim cards to Transsion, the makers of Tecno, deserves all the money he is making for the partnership with Transsion through SLOT. He added real value in our ICT sector through common sense innovation.