Dubai: Obi Worldphone, the brand cofounded by former Apple CEO John Sculley, wants to double its market share in the UAE from the current 5.7 per cent.
“We are OK if we have a small market share but our goal is to execute it properly and be successful,” Neeraj Chauhan, co-founder and chief executive of Obi Worldwide, told Gulf News.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the UAE smartphone market has been growing at a rapid pace, witnessing 31.8 per cent year on year growth in 2014.
As smartphone penetration continues to rise in fast growth markets, Obi wants to occupy a niche segment by bridging the gap between premium-design high-priced smartphones and generic-design low-price smartphones through its new offerings.
“Sculley told us when we launched our first device that we need to find a design gap. There are phones with good designs in the market but they are priced above $700 and there are phones which are a copy of other [phones] between $50 and $400.
“We have designed the phones by renowned Silicon Valley design studio, Ammunition Group from California, and we have made no compromises on component quality,” Chauhan said.
Obi phones are priced at what a normal Android device will cost but have the “quality of a $700 device”.
“We have licensed special camera technology features like refocus where it takes five photos in one click and can be refocused in the front and the back while the ChromaFlash takes two snaps in one click — one with flash and one without flash. The final image takes the brightness from the one with flash and the colour accuracy from the other, creating a single and well-balanced image, especially good for lowlight conditions,” he said.
Smartphone focus
The company has launched two new models of 5-inch SF1 with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage capacity for Dh899, and 3G of RAM and 32GB of storage for Dh1,099.
They will be launching SJ1.5 for Dh599 by end of October.
“Sound and camera are definitely the key areas for a better phone experience and that is where we will be focusing more in our next models,” Chauhan said, adding that Obi has no plans to enter the tablet segment or any other category and the focus will be only on smartphones.
He believes that the opportunity for products breaking through the quality and price barriers is ripe in the region’s consumer technology sector.
“We are here to redefine smartphone experience in markets witnessing high smartphone growth rates. Here, consumers value the delicate balance between superior quality and design. Our proposition fits within this framework quite well,” he said.
He added that the smartphone market is quite big and that the markets where Obi is going to enter have growth rates of between 30 and 50 per cent.
Obi phones will be launching in 20 countries this year and expects to cover 70 countries by 2017.
Chauhan said that Obi will be launching two more models this year and four models next year.
