Barcelona
Wiko, the French smartphone brand, is challenging the smartphone industry with its trendy and colourful mobile phones at an affordable price points. Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the brand is eager to enter into more markets and it surprised the industry by unveiling eight models for the year.
Wiko is majority-owned by Chinese technology group Tinno Mobile and the devices are manufactured in China but the design is from France.
“After the sale of Nokia’s handset business to Microsoft, we have created a successful European brand to challenge the top two brands [Samsung and Apple],” said Laurent Dahan, founder of Wiko.
“I decided to answer the question with the support of my family and close friends. We provided a practical alternative, offering the right technology, with the right design at the right price,” he said.
In a market dominated by a few major players, he said that launching a new brand was certainly a “big challenge”, but it was also a “good opportunity”.
“It all started with a very simple question: why do people have to spend a lot of money to have the best products?” he added.
David Garcia, global general manager at Wiko, said that Wiko operates in over 30 countries today and plans to move into 10 more this year and break into the top five smartphone rankings by 2020.
The brand is number two in France and Portugal, number four in Italy and number five in Spain and Belgium.
He said that the aim is to sell 15 million devices globally this year and develop partnerships with telecom operators.
When asked how Wiko is going to be competitive in the sub $300 (Dh1,101) price range, which is getting very competitive, he said that Wiko has the best balance in the industry with design, technology, quality and price.
With the distinction of becoming France’s second largest selling smartphone after Samsung after just three years, he said that Wiko is now setting a new direction for the smartphone market.
He said there is a market for everyone but you just need to find your customers.
“We don’t have to find our customers as we already know our audience. We call them Wiko generation. They are customers between 15 and 40 years old that look for fashionable products and to be different from top players,” he said.
At the event, the company launched three range of models — Y with prices ranging from 99 euros to 129 euros; U with prices ranging from 169 euros to 199 euros and Fever with 249 euros. All the models will be available in April and May.
As the smartphone segment is getting saturated, manufacturers are focusing on smartphone accessories to make profits.
Wiko also doesn’t want to be left behind and will be launching new accessories line this year.
