Miebi Senge
19 November 2008
interview
MOTOROLA is one of the world's leading equipment vendors. The company's operation in decades. In this interview with Raphael Udeagu, Motorola Nigeria managing director and country manager, held in Sun City, South Africa during the 2008 MOTO4AFRICA Show, he outlines his vision, the company's next moves and relationship with government. Excerpts.
What is Motorola doing right now in Nigeria?
When you talk of Motorola, there are different divisions of Motorola, one of which is Home and Networks then mobile devices and the public safety and enterprise. So these four divisions made up of what you call Motorola.
How many of them are in Nigeria?
There are two represented in Nigeria office. That is home and networks, and mobile devices, the rest of the other two departed from us when they need it, the reason simply been that those were the enterprise and government communications are dealing too much with indirect distribution channels. So they preferred using the network business requirement for them to use agent distributors to get to the end users, because of their product. Now for us, because of the nature of our product we are studying system, so is not something you can serve as piece meal.
So that is the reason while those two divisions of Motorola are localise in their offices in Nigeria.
Are you very effective in Nigeria, because, Motorola, apart of the equipment division, we also have the devices division, how strong is Motorola in these two market?
I think Motorola have been in Nigeria, since the early 60's, supporting the government and private enterprise in Nigeria. Now we are an established legal access since 2001 before then, we were dealing through our channels like Desinggolf and other distributors we have in the country. So when we came in, we could get the role of a vendor relationship to the agents in the country.
They still remain the distributors for the government communication sectors, and the enterprise, we also do have a lot of distributors and agents distributing the hand sets of the mobile telephone that we are talking about, now is a little different it needs more than just distribution, it requires support, ultimate support to the distributors, of course we are selling through the distributors and agents. Because of that we have debts in term of making sure requirement are made, making sure the servicing of those hand sets when they break.
We are also trying to curb the grey market problems, which I'm sure you are very familiar with. Also, we are there with them to make things happen in the right way. So, those two divisions of Motorola they are hundred per cent here in their offices in Nigeria.
It is interesting to know you have a 100% presentation in Nigeria, but obviously, the devices market isn't as robust as one would have expected when compared to rival products?
It is, let me put it this way, you know because of the statistic of the market shelves for the particular product is not something that so dynamics, it changes everyday, so it is very difficult for people like you and I to actually figure out accurate market share Motorola have in comparison to other vendors, like Nokia, and Samsung and others. Now, Motorola mobile devices does have substantial market share in Nigeria, and as you know, the hand set market in every part of the world has a lot of competition among ourselves, French Chinese and other, so it is all over. So we do have substantial market share in Nigeria.
Now that you mention the Chinese, there are products, sometimes pirated and unnoticeable brand, sometimes they come in an anonymous format. How do you tackle that?
I don't know if we have provisions to that, I think there is a lot of activities as you likely put it. I think China today as you know is about to solve their problem, especially when it comes to piracy. So I think the major vendors like Motorola are looking for ways to address it, because it is now at the level that individual cannot handle it alone and it is something that government regulatory frame work needed to come in place to support that effort.
Was there a time Motorola got involved in litigation, especially in the early years of GSM in Nigeria?
In 2001, the auction was done, and network was ordered, for the three operators, EWI,(Econet Wireless) MTN and NITEL,(M-Tel) at the time Glo lost their licence because of the policy issues, now at that time, we won contract to supply equipment to EWI and then we also participated in bidding in MTEL formerly NITEL, now there was an issue with the government that made them to cancel that particular bill.
It was later presented with a more bidders and we participated and won a part because it was divided in three stages so it was also established that each vendor will only win one stage. So we were able to win a stage with; this was 2003. And maybe, what we were referring to was the cancellation of the tendering but there was really no bad relationship with the authorities.
So, is Motorola still interested in last mile operators in Nigeria?
We are basically in the equipment supply and since we supply to a couple of operators, wit would not be too appropriate to compete with our clients.
So, you don't want to be an operators?
No, not because of Nigeria because there is the celebrative principle of vendor not too participate in operating network, if you do you are competing with your self and those operators that buy from you will never buy from you any more, so because that we ought to do something viable now, before now we have division called network venture that participated in that, there was venture between NPCC of Israel, we sell in Egypt, we had a couple of network across the world.
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