WHY GHANA?
Ghana is a mid-size, English speaking, country in West Africa. In 2013, Ghana placed #64 in the World Bank's Doing Business ranking, making it one of the best countries in the region for business.

THE MOBILE MARKET LANDSCAPE
For context, the iPhone 5s was just hitting the shelves and Android Kit Kat was just being released in 2013. The Android operating system has generally dominated the global market, with over 80% of market share in 2015. Android's global success is largely due to its open-source model, leveling the playing field for brands to develop price points and build qualities to meet any consumer.

MOBILE PHONES IN GHANA
Much has been said about the mobile phone revolution in Africa and as in many emerging markets, most Ghanaians have their first experience with a computing or networking device through a smartphone. Yet while an estimated 83% of Ghanaians owned a mobile phone in 2014, only 14% of respondents reported owning a smartphone. In 2013, the upper end of the smartphone market in Ghana was dominated with Tier 1 models like the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One. Just below were reputable Tier 2 brands such as Huawei and Tecno. The rest of the market was flooded with low-cost "China phones". These models were generally dismissed as being low quality, but their affordable price points still made them immensely popular in the market.



FINDINGS & INSIGHTS
Through our observations and research, our team developed a number of insights about the Ghanaian mobile phone market. Some of our findings diverge from many recent trends in the industry. Some of our insights included:
‍
HARDWARE
Dual vs Single SIM: Many Ghanaians associated single-SIM phones as "Originals" whereas dual-SIM models were assumed to be lower quality "China phones". This surprised us (and our suppliers), given that dual-SIM phones were increasingly popular in many emerging markets, including Ghana. Our takeaway was that people would still buy dual-SIM phones but that it came at the expense of brand perception.
Removable Battery: As a grad student, I had conducted several studies in off-grid communities in Kenya. We studied cell phone charging patterns and discovered that people would usually run errands in town once a week. Many kept spare phone batteries so that they could drop it off at a local charging kiosk and pick it up on their next visit the following week. Now this was reasonable with basic feature phones with a 1-week battery life.. but not with smartphones that barely last a day. Phones may have evolved considerably since 2010 but in most places, energy infrastructure still has not.
Standard Headphone Jack: The original Soul Talk and Soul Symphony models required non-standard headphone jacks. Larger companies had made similar mistakes but fora nascent brand such as ours, this was just an unnecessary and prohibitive complication.
Size and Weight: Many people that we spoke to gravitated towards larger, heavier devices because they "felt" more valuable.

SOFTWARE
OS: In many emerging markets, phones tend to have longer lifetimes and second-hand/"legacy" smartphones can be quite common. Many people in the market were still running Gingerbread (2.3), for example. We quickly realized that the OS version was one area where we could slightly compromise on the specs.
Whatsapp: Whatsapp was so popular in Ghana that it was being used as a lead feature to sell phones (despite the fact that pretty much any smartphone could use the app).We knew this had to be promoted with our own phones and even contacted Whatsapp to see if they would explore a feature-phone version over Java-based phones. But alas, it seemed that Whatsapp was looking at different directions as 5 months later, they were bought by Facebook for $19bn
Language Support: Ghana is officially an English-speaking country but has nearly 80 local languages. We wanted to add support for some of the more popular local languages, such as Twi, which use several characters that are not found in English. Smartphone adoption rates in Ghana currently tend to track with English literacy but as adoption increases throughout society as a whole, the proportion of proficient English users will presumably decline.

LOCALIZATION
Packaging: After visiting a number of mobile phone shops, we realized that most stores display handsets outside of their box. As a result, several phone companies were using branded screen protectors to promote specs rather than rely on the exterior packaging alone.
Branding: People didn't seem to connect with the images and themes of the Generation O packaging as much as we'd hoped. For example, several people immediately picked up on the fact that the two boys in the lead photo weren't even West African. And other elements of our packaging (e.g. drums for a music phone) were too subtle for man people to make an immediate connection.
Perception: Interestingly, a local brand, RLG, had recently entered the cell phone market with phones assembled in Ghana. While LG had moderate success with their line of tablets and computers, their mobile phones never really gained traction. Many people we spoke to were skeptical of the quality of a phone made in Ghana and seemed to lump RLG with the "China phones". RLG provided an important counterpoint as we tried to strike a balance in our own branding.