CAPE TOWN - American battery manufacturer Energizer has announced the launch of its first mobile phone into Africa at AfricaCom taking place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre.
Energizer sales director for the Middle East/Africa/Turkey/Pakistan Badradine EL Jazouly said the company started with the mobile phones a year ago across the world, with the biggest market in South Arabia.
“Our biggest market is South Arabia, we have opened now more than ten stores, we have open now one store in Dubai. Today, we are launching in South Africa nine models and we are going to reduce to six because we checked the market and now the market look at six models, not nine,” Jazouly said at AfricaCom, the continent's largest technology and telecommunications event.
According to Jazouly, the Energizer phone is waterproof and chipproof with a 4000 mAh battery which is one of the things the company had focused on because of the brand's background batteries.
Operations Director Yousha Essack said that the company needed to expand beyond batteries and that was what led to the decision to create mobile phones.
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Badradine EL Jazouly, Sales Director: Middle East Africa, Turkey/Pakistan
“You know people are moving away from computers and laptops and using mobile phones, so we thought of creating the mobile phones for both entry level users and high level users.”
He added that the company was still busy negotiating with local cellular networks such as MTN and Vodacom and other major suppliers and were hoping that the mobile phone will be in stores by January 2018.