Kenya’s first local mobile phone assembly has sold 360,000 devices during its first full year of operations, a new disclosure shows.
Athi-River-based plant East Africa Device Assembly Kenya (EADAK) is run by a Safaricom-led joint-venture consortium comprising Jamii Telecom as well as Chinese phone manufacturer Lel, and the Industrial Technology Training Company Limited.
“It was launched in October 2023, targeting three million devices per annum and creating 300 to 500 jobs. To date, 360,000 devices have been sold, valued at Sh21 billion. The government reduced the costs of importing some of the components, enabling reduction of the cost of a smartphone by 30 percent,” the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA)-- a world industry group for mobile operators-said in a report.
While GSMA hails the project as a viable solution to the affordability issue, it has recommended the enactment of more support policies such as low-interest loans, credit guarantees as well as tax incentives, which it says would see the initiative deliver full benefits to the average consumer.
“Based on income percentiles and the cost of a device, we estimate that the potential impact of the reduction of device prices on the usage gap in Kenya could be sizeable, with 39 percent more people being able to access a device at the price of $10 (Sh1,290),” writes the association.
Besides, EADAK financial technology firm M-Kopa also assembles phones in Kenya. So far, M-Kopa has produced about 1.5 million devices locally, most of which have been sold on a hire-purchase basis on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model. Currently, it produces two models – X2 and X20.
Latest data from Communications Authority of Kenya shows Kenyans ditched active use of 1.3 million feature phones in 12 months ending June this year, in a shift that has accelerated the usage of smartphones whose uptake grew by 4.4 million during the same period to hit 35.2 million.
“The telecommunications sub-sector in the country experienced significant growth during the 2023/24 financial year attributed to the expansion of telecom infrastructure and increased adoption of smartphone services,” wrote CA in its latest sector statistics report.
“The penetration rates for smartphones and feature phones were 68.3 and 59.9 percent respectively.”
