UNISOC seeks to revamp East Africa’s Android market

What you need to know:

  • Vice President for UNISOC, Mr Thomas Wu says experience has shown that majority in Africa are victims of fake android phones.
  • UNISOC says the current annual shipments of chipsets to Africa are up to 100 million with various business partners like Orange, Vodacom, Samsung and Trassion. The annual shipments of chipsets globally are up to 700 million per year

Cape Town. UNISOC, a leading fabless semiconductor company committed to the Independent Research and Development of core chipsets in mobile communications is looking forward to revamp the East African security and mobile chipset platforms with high-quality and low-cost mobile products.

Speaking to The Citizen few days ago in Cape Town, Vice President of UNISOC, Mr Thomas Wu said experience has shown that majority in Africa are victims of fake android phones.

Mr Wu was responding to the question of on importation of mobile devices of big brand names with poor products.  Mr Wu said not only in East Africa, many people have fallen victim to knock-off smartphones which have swamped the market, but also the continent.

“These mobile companies selling poor products have to be controlled, because they cost the majority with low cash flows, it is the time in East Africa to make changes, to supply affordable and high quality products,” he told The Citizen during the interview.

He said this in Cape town after The South Africa International Communications Exposition (AfricaCom), where UNISOC and its partners attended this year’s exhibition.

According to UNISOC, currently, the annual shipments of chipsets to Africa are up to 100 million with various business partners like Orange, Vodacom, Samsung and Trassion. The annual shipments of chipsets globally are up to 700 million per year.

 

“We stop doing business with different mobile companies because of selling poor products, we cannot mention names of these companies but we are trying to show how can avoid the challenge,” said Wu.

 

Mr Wu said UNISOC products cover mobile chipset platforms supporting 2G, 3G, 4G communication standards, RF chipsets, wireless connection chipsets, security chipsets, TV chipsets, and image sensor chipsets.

UNISOC as a company, rooted its business to African local carriers and companies for more than 10 years, changed its direction to many mobile fake producers in order to maintain their brand name.  

Target to East Africa

Mr Wu said UNISOC will be focusing on northern, eastern part of Africa with large population and huge potentials on mobile communications, and stick to offering high-quality and low-cost mobile solutions with its business partners. 

He also said through co-operation with Huawei, it’s aiming to offer high-quality, low-cost mobile products to local carriers, meanwhile, increasing the MBB and Apru. UNISOC has a strategy to invest in tracking system that will protect crimes in the East African Countries. 

 

“UNISOC has been one of the top three mobile baseband chipset suppliers in the world, the largest pan chip provider in China, and the leading 5G communications chipset design company in China, so we are trying to look for people from east Africa who majority striving for communications through Android mobile phone which are very friendly to them, “he said.

 

In 2016, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) presented new statistics on the telecom sector in Africa at the recent Africa Telecom conference held in Cairo. According to the ITU survey, over the past five years the continent’s mobile phone use has increased at an annual rate of 65 per cent, which is twice the global average.  Sale of mobile phones in Africa is set to more than double in the next three years.

 

“If you look at the security status in Africa , I don’t think we need more advanced technology , you  need some applications for surveillance cameras, positioning features, for example if you want to protect your kids, you give them a watch with positioning feature to remote where they are any time, such kind of feature,

“Just because we provides local market with high-quality and low-cost mobile products, we have seen a business opportunities and we are willing to accelerate the global penetration in East Africa that will help more people access to global internet through our products, “he said.

He said apart from chipsets, UNISOC is also committed to the Internet of things (IoT) which is based on the networking of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and connectivity which enables these things to connect, collect and exchange data.

New targets to Africa

At this year’s AfricaCom, in addition to the new products released jointly with China Mobile, MTN and KaiOS, UNISOC also joined Huawei, Skyworth, Lephone, Mobicel and other partners participating in this exposition by exhibiting dozens of mobile communications and IoT products to build Africa digital chip ecology.

 

This was to promote traditional Sino-African friendships in the communications field, and jointly seek for the new future of digital development in Africa with innovation.

During the event, Mr Adam Zeng, Executive Vice President of Unigroup and CEO of UNISOC, said:  “Without doubt, Africa market is one of the most important overseas markets for UNISOC, both now and in the long run, and we will continue to invest more in Africa to fill in the mobile communications and IoT gaps in this market.

With customized solutions and excellent services, we will create a rich and diversified mobile ecosystem for Africa that will enable more than 1 billion African consumers to connect intelligently.