Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Weak patronage, bane of local PC growth


Anthony Nwakaegho/DigitalSENSE Business News

Weak patronage for locally assembled personal computers (PC) has been identified as the bane of the 21.5 per cent   growth rate in Nigeria.

The Director, Statistics and Research, NITDA, Mr  Inye Kemabonta, in a recent chat with newsmen  advised indigenous computer manufacturers set the agenda for the government by critically considering the idea of building a common platform for their operations as most PC plants in the country are running very high overhead costs.

The Group Managing Director, Omatek Computers Plc, Mrs Florence Seriki, said “Funding is a local challenge because banks won’t fund hardware makers and besides, the interest on loans starts from 20 percent, while abroad, it is three percent, which makes foreign products to have a competitive edge.”

DigitalSENSE Business News gathered from the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) that the country needs about three million computers yearly to serve the growing local market and out of the 740,000 PCs acquired by Nigerians in 2012, only 148,000 were manufactured locally which translates to mean that 80 percent of the PCs bought by citizens last year were foreign brands.

Most prominent of local brands include: Zinox Computers, Omatek Plc, Brian Computers, Beta, Veda, etc. Interestingly, half of the 20 percent market share is controlled by a single brand, while foreign brands like HP, Dell, Samsung, Acer, among others, are said to control 80 percent of the PC market in Nigeria.

One of the easiest ways DigitalSENSE Business News was informed by the experts  is put in place  a regulatory measure that would create the demand frame work to absorb the supplies of local computers by making schools to build laboratories that will be equipped with such computers.

Industry experts are of the view that the local PC local manufacturers, who now control only 20 percent of the market must invest in research and development to woo consumers to their products, while government fully implement policies that support local patronage and promote local content in Nigeria.

With additional report from BusinessDay


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