
The chief executive officer of financial group FirstRand, Sizwe Nxasana, has bounded about false figures regarding First National Bank (FNB) iPad sales, according to an investigation by ITWeb Africa.
FNB, a division of Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed FirstRand, started selling Apple iPads in October 2011 to its banking customers, and Nxasana has been quoted on South African business publication Moneyweb.co.za two days ago as saying that the bank “has become the biggest reseller of iPads in Africa today.”
“We sell quite a lot, a month we would easily sell in the region of about 35,000 to 40,000 iPads,” Nxasana told Moneyweb.co.za’s Alec Hogg.
In February this year, Nxasana also spoke about a similar figure, after he told Moneyweb’s Hogg that FNB is “selling one iPad a minute.”
But FNB representatives and the official distributor of Apple iPads in South Africa, Core Group, have told ITWeb Africa that Nxasana has got his numbers wrong.
Steve Higgins, senior communications manager for FNB, says the bank is only now approaching close to a total number of 100,000 iPads having been sold in SA since the bank started selling the devices.
A high-up FNB representative has further told ITWeb Africa that the bank sells 7,000 iPads per month.
“Our total for iPads and smartphones is still under 100,000. And we launched the project a year ago,” Higgins told ITWeb Africa.
“But it’s certainly not 30,000 to 40,000 per month,” he added.
“The figures are that we’re approaching 100,000 and that we’ll do a 100,000 announcement. But I’m not sure; I can’t answer as to why (Nxasana) he’s saying that,” he said.
Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk, executive director of Core Group, agrees that Nxasana's quoted figures of 35,000 to 40,000 sales per month are wrong.
“Those figures are not correct,” Rutger-Jan van Spaandonk has told ITWeb Africa.
“We supply them (FNB); so we know.
“What they say in that report is that they’re the biggest reseller, which is also not necessarily correct,” he has said.
The executive director of Core Group also says that his firm works closely with FNB, even “activating many of their iPads in our stores as well.”
Illustrating the further inaccuracy of Nxasana’s numbers regarding iPad sales, South Africa’s Business Day newspaper yesterday has reported that FNB has “sold at cost more than 71,000 units (iPads) so far.”
Revelations about Nxasana’s wrongly stated figures about iPad sales in SA come on the same day as Apple prepares to unveil a new lineup of products.
And South African gadget fans, like many across the globe, are set to keep a keen eye on what products the tech company reveals today.
According to an article that South African technology analyst Arthur Goldstuck wrote in April this year, “figures compiled from retailers show they have sold 205 000 iPads to South Africans since the device was launched in April 2010.”
Goldstuck added at the time that “of those, 20 000 were sold on the 'grey' market by unofficial importers or bought on overseas trips.”
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