ICTworks

If you think the answer to, “Who sells the most laptops in Nigeria?” is a big western brand like HP, Dell, or Toshiba, you would be wrong. You may be surprised to learn that the leading laptop sales company is the homegrown, Nigerian compnay Zinox, as IDC confirms:

The Q2 2010 IDC report posted on the company’s web site reveals that Zinox laptops are the fastest growing and best selling Notebooks in the Nigerian market. Zinox is strongest in the laptop market where it leads six other international brands, including HP, Acer, Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo and LG Electronics, with a 53.6% market share and a year-on-year growth of 799 per cent, while its closest competitor, HP, achieved a 23.6 per cent market share.

Now Zinox isn’t the only respectable Nigerian laptop manufacturer. in 2008, I had the luxury of inspecting a new Omatek Smartbook at the Ministry of Education in Ghana. The Smartbook is a low-cost laptop aimed at the education market:

Omatek Computers is another Nigerian computer company, and its computer assembly factory is in Ghana. This allows Omatek to produce computers tax free for Ghana and Nigeria, within certain quotas, giving it a competitive advantage over international vendors.

The lesson to be learned here is that Nigerians are advancing quickly up the technology value chain – from reseller to assembler – and in doing so, are challenging the major international brands across Nigeria. May we have more success stories like these across Africa.