The Nigerian OEM space is a battlefield with the likes of Samsung, Tecno, and others retaining significant market share. Despite the level of competition, however, late entrant, Infinix Mobile, has been able to attract a loyal following of smartphone users using a unique innovative strategy to market its products – through ecommerce platforms.

The strategy has proved to be very efficient as the company has sold over 1 million smartphones within 10 months after it began operations in the West African country.

Benjamin Jiang, MD at Infinix Mobile, spoke to ITWeb Africa about the uniqueness of his business, smartphones and the Nigerian market.

Paul Adepoju: Why online launch instead of conventional marketing strategies used by other OEMs?

Benjamin Jiang: Everyone likes new technology. If you can have new technology, why go for old one? We started with Konga, and then we added Jumia because the demand is so big so we try to make our phones available everywhere. We decided to give freedom to our customers to allow them to choose the platform they prefer – in terms of service quality, delivery, terms of service. I believe that technology is moving forward and new technology is going to replace the older technology for sure. Instead of joining the war offline, we choose to use the new technology to change the game. That's the main reason we're trying to use online instead of offline.

Paul Adepoju: Could you have sold more products if you had invested more on offline strategies?

Benjamin Jiang: I think yes, we could have done more because we have a big challenge to supply the stock. It's a very new experience for us because online sales do not ramp up like regular market. It can come immediately and suddenly in higher volume. Take for instance last Tuesday we sold 30,000 units in a single day. This is not possible offline. We call it flash sale. How to ensure the supply chain to fulfill the level of demand is very difficult for us.

Paul Adepoju: What is unique about the pricing of Infinix devices?

Benjamin Jiang: For traditional brands they launch at high price and the price comes down gradually. So those customers that bought the device when it launched would feel so bad. But what we do is our customers get the latest product at the best price from day one. This has already been in place for all of our products.

Paul Adepoju: How does the company's performance in Nigeria compare to other regions?

Benjamin Jiang: Nigeria is one of our biggest markets. We are expanding to Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, Asia, and France. Nigeria is one of our most important markets. It is the biggest market we are focusing on in Africa.

Paul Adepoju: How does Nigeria's uniqueness impact the new Infinix Zero2 design?

Benjamin Jiang: We make our phones tougher, lighter, battery with bigger lifespan. This is typically designed for Africa.

Paul Adepoju: Why is it not yet possible in Nigeria for phone users to trade in old Infinix phones for new models?

Benjamin Jiang: We are a brand and we are trying to push our partners like Konga and Jumia to start thinking about this option to make things easier for our customers. But we are already doing something to help our customers. We make our pricing very stable. That means if you want to change your Infinix phone, you can basically sell it at a very good price because our prices do not change.

Paul Adepoju: How can your customers in Nigeria access repair and warranty services?

Benjamin Jiang: We have CarlCare app on all our phones. If you activate this app, you can access the list of all our centers across Africa. You can select the service center which is closest to you, you can call the centers also because they have phone numbers.

Paul Adepoju: What do you believe gives Infinix the edge over other OEMs?

Benjamin Jiang: We have a long term commitment for the African region which is different for other brands. Other brands are focusing more on China, America and Europe. They just do business here. For us, we are designing products mainly for people of this region. We know what they are thinking about. We know what they what. The reason why we launched our Note series is because we understand people want a long standby phone more than people living in the US or Europe. This is the main difference between our brand and other brands.