Fero has shut down some of its operations in Nigeria and is planning to leave the country soon. Find more details in this article.
At the time of this writing, some customers who wish to remain anonymous cited instances that the Company has closed its service centers across the country and are planning on moving out of the Nigerian market. According to these individuals, Fero claims that the Nigerian Tech market is too harsh for them to try and break into it.
If indeed this is true, then it is a sad event that Fero Mobile Devices is planning on leaving the Nigerian Market after less than 2 years ago when they dived into the market with fantastic budget-friendly phones. Fero’s Entry into the Nigerian market was indeed enormous but some of the company’s policies showed that they lacked the kind of research the likes of Tecno Mobile had used to sweep the Nigerian market.
Why Fero may be leaving the Nigerian Tech Market
At inception, Fero phones were widely acknowledged by Nigerians. Many of its feature phones were bought due to the significantly lower price when compared to existing feature phones such as the Nokia 3310. But within the last few years, sales declined to a point of 3% of the Mobile market. This is a disappointing figure when compared against the likes of Xaomi, Tecno, iTel and Nokia.
Fero Mobile has a lot of seemingly quality devices, but according to some Nigerians, there’s a lot more to the picture. For one thing, its Royale Y2 is supper packed to meet the expectations of tech-savvy Nigerians. But the big question is why they have failed to take the market by force?
What may have happened to Fero Mobile
There has been a lot of criticism and controversies surrounding the Fero market in recent years, especially in terms of their servicing and marketing centers. Even with the companies’ trendiness, good quality, and reliability at first glance. It became obvious to some consumers that the Company’s phones lack a lot in terms of durability. Some individuals allegedly stated that have spoken to the media that their Fero phones suddenly developed surprising faults only after a few months of usage. The problems ranged from phone getting too hot quickly to its versatile engineering problems.
And in terms of their customer service and level of tech support, there is a lot left untouched. Some customers lamented that these faults could not be fixed by their service centers around the country. These clients stated that upon visit to Fero’s service centers, there was usually a myriad of excuses with respect to these faults on their smartphones. It was quite clear to them that Fero Mobile did not engineers on site with the technical know-how to fix repairs.
According to another customer, Fero has also failed to meet the market because it has failed to stock spare parts for its phones. This I believe was one of the reasons Tecno and many other brands swamped the market. Nigerians might like the trending device, but they usually figure out if the screen can be fixed before the actual purchase of the smartphone. This is also one of the reasons some other U.S and U.K based smartphones which are cheaper than many brands in the country has not been able to enter the much in Nigeria’s Tech market. Rather than fix broken screens and tech problems, Fero is widely known among customers for its policy of swapping a damaged phone with a new one which means a lot of money as well to its customers.
This as corroborated by a lot of customers is a serious problem because no one wants to get a new phone when they had rather just fix their old one.
As at the writing of the article, efforts made to substantiate or verify the stipulations within this article has proved abortive. If verified, we will update you on whether Fero has indeed moved out of the country or acted differently.
