Former Apple CEO John Sculley is set to launch Obi Mobiles for the East African market in Kenya today. The event will also mark the launching of DESPEC, the official distributor for the devices. Sculley who yesterday addresses Tech enthusiasts in the country during a fireside chat held at the iHub is a lead investor in Obi Mobiles. The Obi range of devices are targeted at the emerging markets having launched in India in 2014. The Company is based in Singapore.
Speaking at the Fireside chat, Sculley spoke of the opportunities mobility presents in the emerging markets with replacement rates of smartphones being more than one a year. The device maker targets to carve out a niche for itself and marketshares at this point do not necessarily mean much to them, they want a presence in the emerging markets, starting with India, the Middle East, South East Asia, Africa and South America.
“We don’t need to be as big as Samsung or Tecno in Samsung, what we need to be is successful, to be in 70 countries in Africa by the end of the year,” said Sculley. Sculley at last evening’s event commented that if they even hit 4% marketshare in a market like India, this means a lot in the global share. ” In 36 months, emerging markets all over the world would determine who the incumbents will be, the time to move in is when there is a transition, like from 2G to 3G, so now it the time to make inroads in the emerging markets,” John added.
Sculley plans to capitalize on the Silicon Valley design and its distribution network through DESPEC to achieve this.The devices are targeted at the youthful population and run on Android operating system on multi-core processors. The devices have dual sim capabilities, large displays and high quality camera options likely to appeal to this demographic. More to follow.
