LG Plans to Invest 50 Mln USD in New Phones in East Africa

South Korea's telecommunications company, LG, said Tuesday it will be investing 50 million U.S. dollars in the Eastern Africa region to gain a foothold for their premium mobile phone handsets.

The LG Nairobi Liaison Office General Manager Byung Su Lee said the money will be used to import the company's range of premium mobile handsets, create awareness through marketing the handsets and carry out a market research for the products within the region.

As you know, the Eastern Africa region is one of the emerging mobile phone markets and LG has started to give a very big focus to the region, Lee told a news conference in Nairobi.

He said the company has earmarked two million dollars for marketing its handsets and products in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. Lee said the company has projected to increase its sales in these markets from over 500,000 handsets sold last year to one million by 2009.

He said marketing is expected to equalize the challenge posed by cheap and low quality handsets from the Far East markets which have saturated the region.

We shall do this by continuing to position LG phones at the premium level with its entire product range of premium low, premium medium and premium high handsets, Lee said during the launch of the premium medium's handset, the LG-KF510 in the Kenyan market.

The handset incorporates an auto luminance control (ALC) technology that enables it save battery power a maximum of 29 percent longer than previous introduced handsets.

The phone reflects the trend in the mobile market industry, where manufactures are including features which drain batteries like LCD colour screens for browsing the Internet and watching videos.

The longer lasting battery power allows for more convenient use of high technology features like camera's MP3 players, radio and video players, said Anthony Hutia, the company's GSM/CDMA regional manager.

Hutia said the ALC sensor automatically adjusts the brightness of the numeric key pad, LCD screen back light and the LED interactive touch. A 10.9mm thick, the KF510 is very slim, with a screen scratch roof feature that guarantees the phone durability.

 

 

 

  

 

Source: www.portofrotterdam.com