DUBAI: Former Apple chief executive John Sculley, the man behind the Obi Mobiles brand, says that it is a “perfect time” to enter the market as the mobile phone industry is commoditised.
He told Gulf News on Monday that many regional brands are moving into that space but they are not trying to differentiate other than the latest features.
“If you do only on features, I don’t know how to do that, it is very challenging. The only way I know to do is if you build it around your personality. If you connect the person to the technology in a way that the technology becomes visible and the person becomes important,” he said, after launching five new smartphones in Dubai — Octopus S520; Hornbill S551; Falcon S451; Wolverine S501 and a feature phone F240 — ranging from Dh99 to Dh799.
Sculley, a renowned marketing veteran with an aim to target the mid-range smartphone market, is known for firing the late Steve Jobs from Apple in 1985. He became the CEO of Apple in 1983 and held on to that post for 10 years.
He said the key to succeed in the brutal smartphone sector is to connect with young people and bundle the offerings as per their usage.
More importantly, he said that fashion is driving the industry rather than technology as the technology has become a commodity and fashion is the way to distinguish yourself from others.
“Of course, you need to have technology but technology by itself is not enough,” he said.
A smartphone’s normal lifespan is 12 months so people tend to change their mobile set each year.
“What we want to do with Obi is to optimise the things people do on social networking, make it easier to do photos, make it easy to post photos and make it easier to do things in one hand.”
“We are going to be on the Android platform. At the moment, there is no much difference compared to other Android phones but we have a road map to tweak it and make is easier next year,” Sculley said.
When asked whether you plan to make Obi as another Apple product, he said that you need to crawl before you walk. Obi Mobiles was launched in April. “We will be very happy to have a very small market share in a huge market focusing on youth in the emerging markets and that is our strategy. Let us see how it will develop,” he said.
Back in the early days, “we never knew where Apple would turn into. What we are doing now is one step at a time. We believe that we can build a profitable company with growth and loyalty in the segment we are trying to build our franchise. If we can build that strong relationships with Jumbo and other resellers we work with, that is a measurement of success for us,” he said.
The company plans to target other parts of the Middle East, Africa and South America soon.
With smartphone growth in emerging markets expected to grow at 32 per cent annual growth rate, Obi believes there is scope for doubling the growth by increasing accessibility in the market through aggressive pricing and a strong line-up of products.
“We aim to have five per cent market share over the next few years,” he said.
Sculley said his name would not add value to Obi by being associated with it, but Vishesh Bhatia, chief executive officer at Jumbo Electronics, interrupted and said that there was no doubt Scuklley’s credibility would boost the brand.
“With the regional smartphone industry rapidly maturing into a multi-brand structure, new devices are more easily seeing acceptance and curiosity among consumers. We will look to leverage this trend and drive the brand identity across this market,” Bhatia said.
