Etisalat Nigeria in continuation of its innovative Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives targeted at improving education in the country is sponsoring the top three students from the first year of the Etisalat Telecommunications Engineering Program (ETEP) at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria for intensive training at the Etisalat Academy, Dubai.

Oyetola Oduyemi, manager, Corporate Social Responsibility at Etisalat, disclosed that further training at the Etisalat Academy would reinforce the students’ practical knowledge of Telecommunications Engineering and also provide them with a competitive edge.

“At Etisalat, we believe that the right education has the potential to impact every aspect of life, so education remains central to our CSR interventions; this is why weare sending the three best studentsfrom the Etisalat Telecommunications Engineering Program class of 2014, to the Etisalat Academy in Dubai, to expand their horizons and give them further exposure to the cutting-edge technology driving the telecommunications industry”, Oduyemi said.

“As the program continues, we plan to train 15 to 20 students yearly to give Nigerians an opportunity to learn from the best in the field.  We will also develop local expertise to sustain the program by sponsoring lecturers from ABU to study for a PhD in Telecommunications Engineering at the Plymouth University, UK” she added.

The Etisalat Telecommunications Engineering Program, organized in conjunction with the University of Plymouth, UK and Huawei Technologies Limited, is the first program offering an MSc in Telecommunications Engineering in West Africa.

Smartphones Account for 75% of Phones Shipped in the GCC – IDC
Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker shows that smartphones now make up 75% of the phones shipped in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), with buyers increasingly moving toward 4G handsets as the market matures, according to the latest figures from International Data Corporation (IDC).

The market intelligence firm’s that GCC shipments of 4G LTE handsets have increased more than four times over the last year and are now close to accounting for one half of all smartphones sold in the region.

“The GCC is less than a year behind the market development already seen in Western Europe,” says Simon Baker, program manager for IDC’s handset research in Central Europe, Middle East, and Africa. “However, the market is further behind the U.S., where 4G already makes up three quarters of the smartphone market.”

Elsewhere in the Middle East and Africa, the overall smartphone market is rapidly expanding, with growth rates picking up over the last two quarters. IDC research shows that in Africa as a whole and in the wider Middle East beyond the GCC and Turkey, the number of smartphones sold in Q3 2014 was up 300% year on year. “We are in the midst of a boom,” said Isaac Ngatia, a research analyst at IDC Middle East, Africa, and Turkey.

“The technology levels are more basic than those seen in the GCC and 4G phones remain relatively uncommon, but many consumers are now getting their hands on a smartphone for the first time.”

“It is a very different kind of market from the Gulf,” adds Baker. “Cheaper phones are the ones selling in high volumes, and prices are tumbling; the average price paid is not much more than half that in the GCC. The brand situation is different too; beyond Samsung and Chinese brands like Lenovo, Huawei, and ZTE that are making a push in the region, many of the bigger players just focus on single countries or sub-region and aren’t well known beyond them.”

There are also a number of brands in this market that typically focus only on distribution and marketing, and mainly source their phones from the production catalogues of independent manufacturers in China.

“It is a different sort of brand from the international names the handset industry is usually associated with, and as a model it is working very well at the moment,” said  Popal.

“These regional brands are able to offer Android phones sourced from China that have the larger screen sizes and functions of models from the big international names but at much lower prices.”

Key examples include Tecno in Nigeria and Kenya, whose smartphone shipments were up 269% year on year in Q3 2014, and Q-mobile in Pakistan, which has more than half the national market and posted growth of healthy 42%.

“Brands such as these will continue to perform well over the coming quarters,” concluded Popal. “Smartphone shipments in these poorer countries will expand a lot further in the next couple of years, as they still account for less than half the total handset market.”

IDC’s Europe, Middle East and Africa Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker® provides a unique insight into the forces shaping the handset and smartphone markets in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Africa.

The smartphone market is growing rapidly across the region, but while it already takes the lion’s share of mobile phone sales in more developed markets, in poorer countries and where mobile operators do not subsidize phone purchases on usage contracts, feature phones are still the majority of sales in units sold.

This tracker service will quantify for clients the trends impacting the mobile phone market, and provides, on a quarterly basis, vendor shares, technology trends, and a host of technical breakouts that help vendors and industry players define strategies for tracking the future wireless device market.