The way to make money

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Author | 闫 文

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In Africa, in addition to the wig, what is the business? Many people will first think of mobile phones.

Sincerely, in recent years, with the advancement of African infrastructure, mobile phone penetration rate is increasing. According to the US Subucheng Research Center, in 2002, the adults with mobile phones in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Having mobile phones were 10%, and there were about 33% of South Africa. But in 2019, according to GSMA statistics, the smartphone permeability of Saharan Sahara is approximately 45%, and the penetration rate of network users is approximately 45%. It is expected that the penetration rate of smartphones in 2025 will rise to 67%.

The huge market attracted a large number of Chinese businessmen, including a large number of mobile phone businessmen in China, these merchants sneaked into Africa, selling Cost-effective mobile phone. They found that Africans’ desire for mobile phones is comparable to the desire of silk for silk, sales become incapacitated, and many people have earned a lot of money.

In addition to the practitioners of Huaqiang North, the domestic mobile phone giants also aimed at this market, such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, etc., have poured into Africa.

Huawei is one of China’s mobile phone manufacturers in Africa, in 1996, Huawei began to expand the African market, and has now become one of the mainstream suppliers of the African Telecom market. Huawei African employees have written in Huawei \”Sound Community\”, \”We insist on visiting our customers every day, communicating our progress, analyzing customer needs, timely delivery plan and strategy.\”

\”Huawei mobile phone pricing is not much lower than European brand mobile phone, they rely on service rather than pricing competitive advantage.\” A African mobile phone seller said.

This market also allows a mobile phone giant called a voice holding (688036.sz) to grow rapidly, and the sound holdings established in 2006 mainly facing the African market, in 2019 Kobang is available, with mobile phone brand such as Tecno, Itel and Infinix.

According to IDC data, the proposal of the sound control in the African smart machine market increased from 36.9% in 2019 to 40% in 2020. In 2020, the voice holding a total of 174 million mobile phones, and the global market share has been ranked fourth.

African market letThe sound control is rapidly growing in just ten years and successfully listed. The company’s revenue increased from 11.6 billion yuan in 2016 to 37.8 billion yuan in 2020. In the third quarter of 2021, the voice holding revenue revenue is 35.77 billion yuan; the net profit of return from 2017 is 671 million yuan in 2017 By 2020, 2.686 billion yuan, the third quarter of 2021, this number is 2.88 billion yuan.

An employee of a voice holding said that the logic of the sound control is not a Chinese brand, but in the establishment of an overseas brand, in the local insight into the local user needs. For example, the local construction plant has brought the first foreign exchange for Ethiopia, establishing a good after-sales system service customer, service covers the life cycle of the entire machine.

Compared to Huawei’s Watch, Samsung mainly relies on brand value to win, Samsung or Apple is the top end of the transformer chain. In 2018, Samsung announced the establishment of retail stores and expansion retail channels in African countries outside Kenya, and reduced product delivery time.

In fact, not only mobile phones, Africa as a developed market, more and more investors enter this site. Europe and the United States Internet companies have a larger layout in Africa. In May 2020, foreign media said that Facebook established a length of approximately 37,000 kilometers (about 22991 miles) in Africa to make this African continent with 1.3 billion people. More people can go online. Facebook said that the main goal of the program is to increase contact with Africa.

In 2019, Google announced the construction of submarine cable connecting Europe and Africa, which is expected to complete construction at the end of 2021.

According to the research institution data, 2015 to 2020, MTN (South Africa’s largest telecom operator) mobile tariff annually, an average drop of 40%, and the decline in traffic tariff means Mobile Internet waves accelerate, social, information, and e-commerce applications will also speed up the giant. In 2019, African e-commerce giants Jumia (JMIA.us) US stocks listed, currently more than $ 1.1 billion.

But the market risk and opportunity in this growth coexist, too many uncertainties are also influenced by investors who are squeezing into the market. For example, policy factors, market environment, etc., bring too many uncertainty to these investors.

Everyone is waiting for this market to mature, and then harvesting traffic is the next Aliba, Tencent or byte beating. However, these people need more resistance to risk to meet the challenges of the market.

The non-formal army earned three or 40,000 yuan in Africa month

In 2017, the cousin told Peng Liang, the African market was good, let him go to Africa to do mobile phone business. In 2013, because Huaqiang North closed big rebate, the cousin went to Africa to make mobile phone business, and when the month, the month earned three or 40,000 yuan, it was very easy. I have already earned the first barrel of gold in the African market, and I want to grab a larger market opportunity, and he plans to invest in Africa.

At that time, Peng Liang also sold mobile phones in the building booth in Huaqiang North, one mobile phone profit is only 5 yuan or 10 yuan, and the customer is in less.

TCHICE brother’s mobile phone business in Africa, he gave Peng Liang to describe the prospects full of wealth taste: Africans’ desire for mobile phones is strong than Chinese. . From Shenzhen wholesale, a mobile phone priced for three or four hundred yuan, to African profit can have 70%. Africans don’t care about the brand, grabbed, they only care about the battery to be durable. And in terms of function, they are more concerned about whether the phone is a dual card dual standby or even more cards.

At each time, Huaqiang has not had a bustling in the past. The rise of the Internet and squeezed the market space. The rise of online shopping, let Huaqiang North hawker face the survival crisis, under the encouragement of the cousin, Peng Liang is also considering the place.

At the end of June 2017, Peng Liang went to Africa, he chose the second largest city of the Congo, Lu Ben Bi.

Take the plane for 15 hours, wrapped around the earth, firing, Peng Liang didn’t feel very hot, but feel more comfortable than Shenzhen, the only one, the black people It has to be higher than Peng Liang.

Out of the terminal, Peng Liang has a kind of illusion, as if time shuttle, returned to Luo Cheng County and potholes in Guangxi, where more than 10 years ago, the road, private row The house, people wear half sleeves with Chinese characters such as \”Jiangxi Lingma 66\”, \”US Mission takeaway\”, talk about laughter in the street. What makes him feel that the magic is, you can also see the soldiers sitting on the truck.

Peng Liang’s mobile phone store is located in the second largest city of Congo The center of Xiqi, a total of more than 30 square meters, one month rents $ 2,000. Later, Peng Liang felt that there was too little traffic, and I ran to the mall to rent several counters, and one month rents were only $ 300.

\”We don’t sell mobile phones, called wholesale mobile phone.\” Peng Liang said. His mobile phone store can sell more than 2,000 mobile phones in one month, and pure profit can reach 30,000 yuan. He hired six or seven employees. After the mobile phone from Shenzhen, he sold this mobile phone. He mainly had Huawei, HTC, Jin Li and other mobile phone brands, and then rely on several local dealers to distribute, more words, there arePeople take more than 20 sets to sell, and they can take four or five units at a time.

For a while, Peng Liang found that Africans specially charged mobile phones, and the repair rate is particularly high. Or screen is broken, or the handset is broken. \”They dance at any time, running, even cars, making mobile phone damage chances.\”

Refurbished mobile phone from Huaqiang North market accounts for half of sales. In the eyes of the emotion, Huawei and other dealers, they are the cottage army, but Peng Liang said, \”they (African) salary is so high, you can’t afford it. (Cottage) market will always exist, in the future I don’t do a mobile phone, there will be some people to do. \”He said.

Peng Liang gives employees very high, payment of 400 yuan, selling a commission of 3 yuan, employee wages from 1,000 yuan to 2,000 yuan. It is to know that the wages of the local police are not 200,000 yuan, and the babysitter has a monthly salary of 700 yuan.

In Peng Liang, the mobile phone is still a very large market in Africa. According to national funds, only 40% of the penetration rate of African intelligent machines in 2020, and per capita intelligent machine ownership is only 0.33. This has a huge gap with the Chinese market. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, due to the end of May 2021, China Mobile phone users were 1608 million households, according to China 141 billion population, China’s per capita mobile phone penetration rate was 113.9%.

More importantly, although the Africans are not high, most people are willing to spend more than one or two months to buy a smartphone, everyone basically has a part. Function machine, a smart machine, a function machine, smart phone Internet access.

\”People go in time, focus on the present, to spend money for themselves, many employees are moonlight people, some employees have no money to find boss.\” Peng Liang said.

But profits are getting thinner. Like Peng Liang, there are seven or eight Huaqiang North in this street in Lu Ben, selling mobile phones, everyone will cooperate with each other, but will compete.

Today, the profit of a mobile phone has dropped to 100 yuan. In addition, the return has become impossible, because the epidemic cause, air transport becomes expensive, one kilogram freight is 90 yuan, which makes some \”after-sales mobile phone\” to pay for it, because it is not possible to return to Shenzhen, not shipping.

More importantly, Shenzhen and Huaqiang North from the supply chain end is strengthening the governance of infringement of intellectual property rights and the cottage machine. This allows the supply to take great risk, supply It becomes unstable, sometimes the order cycle has become 3 months or even half a year.

Giants compete for adventure island

Peng Liang is only a non-main army belonging to this trend, and the greater main force is the commercial company.

The background is that in 2017, the China Smartphone Market has a 5% decline in shipments. This is a turnover. For all Chinese mobile phone brands, the Chinese mobile phone market has become more saturated. They are eager to open up new markets, and Africa is undoubtedly a good choice.

In addition to Huawei and Moisturous Holdings, other mobile phone giants have also entered the African market.

In January 2019, Xiaomi announced the establishment of the African Region, and they also cooperated with the African e-commerce platform Jumia to sell. Xiaomi Half Year’s Financial Report Disclosure, as of June 2021, Xiaomi was 8.5% in the African Smartphone Market.

In August 2020, OPPO announced that it entered the South African market. In the fourth quarter of 2020, OPPO announced that it is the third largest sales company in the African market after the sound control, Samsung.

\”Assume that friends have 10% market share 800-9 million This amount is not particularly large for Ov meters (OPPO, VIVO and Xiaomi). There is no great attraction to make them put more resources. \”The above-mentioned voice holding employee estimates. According to statistics, OPPO sells approximately 115 million mobile phones in 2020, so that the African market has relatively rely on the position of the OPPO sales network.

Peng Liang’s impression is profound, Huawei has built telecommunications for most African countries. According to statistics, 70% of information technology backend networks in Africa are constructed by Huawei. In 56 countries in Africa, with Huawei’s cooperative business as many as 40 countries.

\”Their employees have opened up the African market in the earliest, and we worship them.\” Peng Liang said.

The mobile phone may not be Huawei’s most important business in Africa. Research institutions Counterpoint released the African Smartphone Market for 2020 shipments, from the manufacturer’s ranking, Huawei missed the top three, Samsung only row second.

\”Many people regard Africa, the Middle East as Huawei mobile phone in the background of breakthrough, but in fact, these market capacity is limited, thin, the demand for high-end machines Small, from the long run, Huawei mobile phone is downgrade rather than the upgrade, it is countercurrent rather than the flow. \”A mobile phone industry expert said.

Motto Holdings are experiencing dramatic changes in the local market,They are one of the most important infrastructure of Africa to mobile Internet. According to the 2020 data, Tecno (the mobile phone brand) in 2020, in 2020, the first replacement Samsung became the largest smartphone brand in Africa, with a year of 18%, while the Samsung market share is 15%.

The Peng Liang mobile phone store has a voice store, and their features are \”sales service integration\”, sales and service synchronization. Digital employees emphasized the concept of service.

In 2017, an employee of the voice holding is shared from Africa to Shenzhen. He mentioned that the local people use Facebook, whatsapp, etc., if Sound has a product to help them do translation during social processes, and it is a very sense of accomplishment.

But this market is very small, such as 23 countries in 56 countries in Africa, there are more than 60 different languages, 60% of users often speak English, 20%. Wen, 10% say Arabic, the remaining people have more than 50 languages, may have hundreds of people say a language, or tens of thousands of people say another language, the market capacity is very small, and the application market at the time There is already a translation tool such as Google, Facebook.

But the voice is decided to do, and it is necessary to make a software that does not need to copy, open, paste into the translation application, reducing the pain points of the user, and finally, they have made Hi Translate and Hi Dictionary two products, this product supports 110 languages \u200b\u200bof 23 countries, and has achieved 1 million users within a few months,

When the user is first downloaded Motion has made a lot of prefabricated commands. An offline translation package, may be 50MB in Europe, but in Africa, after the AI \u200b\u200balgorithm and compression, the tone is reduced to 2MB, or 3MB, reducing user traffic consumption.

\”For local consumers, the voice is to win the consumer mind from the most localized innovation, from the earliest four card four to wait until now smart module The hardware experience is an embodiment of innovation. \”A product manager focused on overseas business said.

In addition, in the empty African market, Indian employees play an important role. An observer in Africa said that Chinese people are a general agent of a country or region. The next level will develop Indians or Africans a dealer. The main reason is that Indians are more likely to integrate into local culture and enter the local circle.

Uncertainty is enhanced

The mobile phone may only be a carrier of African investment and entrepreneurship in this wave of Internet wave, everyone wants the Internet to be like China, Get burst in Africasend.

\”\” There is too much dollar, and the African project is not investigated. \”The first non-invotexual employee in China non-invoiced an incubated institution telling an overseas Internet product manager and venture capital investment It is a expectation, and the emerging market is more able to build expectations relative to the mature market, with a greater imagination space, in other words, risk and return are proportional.

Take Nigeria as an example, mobile payment platform OPAY announced the completion of the latest round of $ 400 million in financing, the prison control and Netease’s PalmPay also received $ 100 million in financing. In addition to these two large platforms, Jumo, South African Financial Technology, has also obtained more than $ 100 million in financing, as well as large and small items.

\”Everyone will fill this infrastructure for payment tools, which is the future of the next Alipay, and it is also the most important link to the closed-loop of mobile interconnection services.\” A people who know Say.

In 2021, the amount of financing obtained by African startups is much higher than last year, although business data does not grow in the same level.

Almost everyone recognizes the opportunity of the African market, but the challenge is also shrouded in a huge market, such as the turmoil political pattern and division of multivariate culture, this is a 56 The market consisting of countries, rather than a single giant market like China.

According to PARTECH, from African countries or regions The financing is shown. Like the previous year, the amount and number of venture capital is still concentrated in a few markets such as Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa. The top 4 countries attracted 80% of venture capital, and the rest of the country is still in Waiting for the economic Popular Waves.

Most of Africa seems to be very tradition, such as advertising consumption. In Africa, local consumers have very high reliability of advertising media, FM broadcasts, outdoor advertisements (such as brush wall), TV these traditional channels are far higher than simply put on various Internet advertising, they think that they have the ability to be in these places Put the company, the strength will not be too bad and will not run easily. In 2020, Kenya’s FM channel or advertising revenue also rospected first, which is far from investigators.

\”All emerging market methods are similar, in the emerging markets like Indonesia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines, is also like this, posted buses, brush walls, etc. \”A overseas Internet product manager said.

If you want to make a game, e-commerce, advertising, etc., in Africa may still need first, etc., even the cycleIt can be longer. For example, Jumia has been on sale in 2018, in the third quarter of 2021, its revenue is only 18.6 billion US dollars, although a year-on-year increase of 18.42%, but net loss has reached 14.3 billion US dollars, 25.14% year-on-year. .

If you want to harvest fruit, there is a voice holding. According to statistics, the sound holdings have exceeded 10 monthly activation months of the company, including the largest music streaming platform BoomPlay, news aggregation applications, including SCOOPER and short video applications.

But it is increasingly difficult to earn income in the African market. \”First, the brand needs to go to higher ends, second, expansion problems, such as home appliance brand with mobile phone channels, moderate; third is the software layer, Africa is in a very early stage, this business It is more difficult. \”A product manager for a sea company judged.

The sound control is also in advance toward the \”millet\” IOT business product. In 2015, the sound holdings set up SYINIX, focusing on professional electricity, production, including smart TV, air conditioning, refrigerator, washing machine and other products. But an industry says that \”the voice\” is to reduce the channel cost, but can be discussed to apply the mobile phone channel with marketing mode to home appliances, \”

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In 2018, Ma Yun also funded 10 million US dollars, setting up the \”Ma Yun African Entrepreneur Fund\”, helping African young people to achieve dreams, let them \”seize the popular globalization and digitization, let Africa have 100 Alibaba\” .

At each time, the overall shipments of the African mobile phone market were 215.3 billion, a slight drop of 1.9% a year-on-year. Among them, functional mobile phone shipments are 1.271 billion, accounting for 59.0% of the overall market, while smartphone shipments are 88.2 million units, accounting for 41.0% of the overall market.

With the acceleration of network construction, the African smartphone market has been rapidly accelerated. According to the first quarter of 2021, the African smartphone market is in strong recovery, up 16.8% year-on-year, reaching 23.4 million units. Data Display Summit Holdings (Tecno, Infinix and ITEL) continue to lead African smartphones in the first quarter of 2021, with a total share of 44.3%, followed by Samsung and OPPO, 22.9% and 8.3%, respectively.

In the third quarter, according to the data released by Counterpoint, the shipments of the Middle Eastern African Smartphone Market were 46.5 million units, an increase of 1% year-on-year. But the global smartphone market fell by 6% year-on-year.

This image is extremely \”time machine theory.\” In 2003, when Ma Yun established Taobao, the number of mobile phones sold in China was about 40 million units, and the number of netizens was 59 million, and the mobile phone was still in the 2G era.

After 4 years, 2007 Jobs launched the iPhone series, China’s Internet entered the mobile Internet era, Alibaba immediately became the highest China market Internet company, and became the entrepreneurship incentive. spark.

But notably, blind enthusiasm will enlarge hope and ignore the risk, in China, the United States, etc.

In Peng Liang, although the African market is still growing, the risk is also enhanced, here, not for a long time. \”We will not be integrated here, we will still return to China.\” Peng Liang said, usually he also maintains the habit of Chinese dining, eats a piece of green vegetables, 100 dollars of grilled fish, and 20 yuan old drum.

* The title is from @ 微 博 传音 控 控. Peng Liang in the article was pseudonym.

* Disclaimer: In any case, the information or expressed opinions herein does not constitute an investment recommendation to anyone.