智能手機在尼日利亞 Smartphones in Nigeria

Smartphones in Nigeria

智能手機在尼日利亞

BlackBerry babes

黑莓女孩

Its devices are still popular there, but Africa won’t save RIM

黑莓手機在這裏依然暢銷，但非洲不會拯救RIM

“DO YOU know how many times you have embarrassed me because you have refused to buy me a BlackBerry?” Keisha screams in a dusty car park, jabbing her boyfriend’s chest. Daniel says he can’t afford it until next month. It is the final straw for Keisha.

在一個髒兮兮的停車場，凱莎猛的捶打着男友的胸膛，大聲尖叫，“你知道麼？就因爲你不願給我買黑莓手機,我老是被人看不起。”丹尼爾說下個月他就能把錢湊夠。這也是凱莎最後一根救命稻草了。

This is a scene from “BlackBerry Babes”, a Nigerian film about women wooing men into buying them such a smartphone. The plot may be absurd, but its sense of fashion is spot on. RIM, the maker of the device, may get clobbered elsewhere in the world (its market share in America has dropped to 1.6%), but in Nigeria BlackBerrys are still hot.

這是尼日利亞電影“黑莓女孩”中的一個場景，內容講的是女人讓男人給她們買一個類似的智能手機。情節看上去很荒唐，卻真實反映了當地流行的風尚。手機廠商RIM在世界其他地方（黑莓手機在美國的市場佔有率跌至1.6%）的市場可能日漸衰落，但在尼日利亞，黑莓手機依然很暢銷。

The country’s obsession with BlackBerrys is part of a wider trend: although the market share of smartphones is still small, they are becoming more popular all over Africa. They allow those unable to afford computers to browse the internet for a few dollars a month. Thumb-tapping phone users generate 67% of online searches in Nigeria. More than 4m of its citizens own a smartphone, about 4% of mobile subscribers.

尼日利亞對黑莓手機的癡迷是一個大趨勢的縮影：儘管在這裏智能手機的市場份額不大，但在整個非洲用智能手機的越來越多了。對於那些沒能力購買計算機上網的人來說，每個月只要花幾美元就可以使用智能手機就可以解決問題了。在尼日利亞觸屏手機用戶產生67%的在線搜索流量。有400多萬市民擁有智能手機，佔全部移動用戶的4%。

If half of these use a BlackBerry, it is because RIM has managed to attract the younger set, says Nicholas Jotischky, an analyst at Informa, a market researcher. Users particularly fancy the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, which allows them to send texts for nothing. “I have a BlackBerry to talk to friends—and boys. If you have a BlackBerry people see you in a certain light,” says Diana Ogwuegbu, a student in Lagos, who has hundreds of BBM friends. Savvy businesses use BBM to market their products.

一個市場研究員，Informa的分析師Nicholas Jotischky說，由於RIM將客戶羣定位於年輕羣體，所以有半數的用戶使用黑莓手機。用戶特別喜歡黑莓手機的短信（BBM）功能，這可以讓他們免費發送消息 (通過數據方式-如GPRS發送，不是SMS)

。拉各斯的一個擁有衆多BBM朋友的學生Diana Ogwuegbu說，“我用黑莓手機跟朋友聊天—包括男友，擁有黑莓手機會讓朋友對我刮目相看，”一些精明的企業用BBM推廣產品。

BlackBerrys are quite secure, but RIM’s market share is not. Although Nokia, another troubled phonemaker, still boasts high sales figures in Africa, it is Chinese firms such as Huawei, ZTE and Tecno which are more likely to erode RIM’s market share: they offer cheaper handsets and smartphones with two SIM cards (which allows customers to use two different networks—handy in a country where wireless service is unreliable). RIM may also suffer as Nigerian operators start to offer Apple’s iPhone.

黑莓手機安全性很高，但RIM的市場份額就沒那麼樂觀了。儘管另一家深陷泥潭的手機廠商諾基亞也在非洲具有良好的銷售業績，類似華爲、中興和德卡諾這類中國公司可能會慢慢吞噬RIM的市場：這些廠商的手機和智能手機有兩個SIM卡槽（這樣用戶能使用兩個不同的網絡，這對於一個信號不好的國家來說很實用），而且價格更便宜。隨着尼日利亞的運營商引入蘋果，RIM也在遭受同樣的困境。

So Nigeria, or Africa for that matter, is unlikely to save RIM. For that, other things have to go right, in particular the launch of devices that use the new BlackBerry 10 software in January. Nollywood may soon have to use another storyline: being spurned for still using a BlackBerry.

因此尼日利亞或者非洲無法拯救RIM。所以RIM必須做出正確的決策，特別是明年1月要推出使用BlackBerry 10軟件的新手機。諾萊塢很快就會有新故事講了：誰還用黑莓誰就會成爲笑柄。