Emerging Market in Developing Countries
Future Environment and Opportunity
Based on the fact that nearly 60% of RIM’s revenue today is coming from international market, as well as that RIM still remains high market share in enormous frontier countries such as Nigeria, Mexico and Indonesia, it’s critical for us to stay in and expand these booming emerging markets in developing countries.
Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation with more than 170 million people and it is an incredibly young country. In India, the growing middle class is estimated to be 300 million. Over half of India’s population of 1.1 billion are under 25. Roughly 31% of the population in India are under 14 while 40% are under 14 in Nigeria. Middle class and young people have large spending power, so these developing Asia and Africa countries are the future market we should be in the next five year.
A Citigroup economist made a prediction that Nigeria’s economy will grow at an average rate of 6.9% until 2050. The need of mobile phones is explosive since there’s almost no land-line phone, not all the family has computers, laptops. Also, the Internet access is expensive, so mobile phone is one of the few options that Nigerians have to communicate with their friends and family. There are roughly four million Smartphone in Nigeria, but only 50% of them are Blackberries. The market there is competitive but has lots of potential.
Given Nigeria’s growing demographics, as long as RIM can maintain its current market share, it will grow anyway. The largely undeveloped market is getting bigger, richer and also shifting to higher-value Smartphone all at the same time. The same assumption for the future five years applies to India, Mexico and Indonesia, too.
Although Apple doesn’t open a store in Nigeria yet, it is trying to tap this market. Recently some local retailers have been reached by Apple and