Business
Seemahale Telecoms: An African company building an African smartphone for Africa’s needs
(Reuters) – Millions of cell phones are shipped to Africa every month, but a South African black-owned company hopes to rival the likes of Samsung and Nokia with home-grown smartphones tailored to African needs.
Seemahale Telecoms, which already makes telecommunications equipment in South Africa, is set to build a model that looks similar to Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and runs on Google’s Android operating system, to sell at around 2,500 rand (US$260).
“It just didn’t seem right that there are hundreds of millions of phones in Africa, none of which are actually manufactured here,” Seemahale founder and CEO Thabo Lehlokoe said in an interview.
“Not because of anything other than the fact that everybody tended to think that it is cheaper to do these things in China.”
If it seems implausible that an African company with no experience of building phones could compete seriously with established global manufacturers, Seemahale counters that his as yet unnamed phone will fill an unmet need.
A natural big-brand comparison might be the Sony Xperia Go, which has a similarly rated processor and retails for 2,899 rand (US$300).
But whereas the Go has a 3.5-inch touchscreen and advertised talk time of up to 6.5 hours, Seemahale’s phone will have a 5-inch touchscreen, and Lehlokoe says its 2,250 mAh battery will offer talk time of “over a day”.
