The fastest growing phone brand in Europe, France’s Wiko, formally makes its entry into Nigeria today with twin events to unveil the brand at the Eko Hotel & Suites in Victoria Island, Lagos.

Wiko is bringing to Nigeria 10 of the 22 models in its portfolio as it seeks a share of the Nigerian phone market estimated at two million units monthly.

Wiko is the second largest European phone model by sales numbers in 2013 and growing rapidly. Nigeria is the second launch in Africa following the earlier entry into Kenya.

Six of the 10 models already at the retail end in Nigeria are smartphones. They include the high end Highway, Rainbow, Bloom, Lenny, Sunset and Goa. The feature phones are Kir-3, Riff and Lubi3.

Style and affordability are key attributes of the Wiko range, its officials say.

Ahead of its formal launch in Nigeria, Wiko Mobile took 12 channel partners on an excursion to Dubai to interact with other partners across the globe as it rolls out across the world. The Nigerian channel partners met with their counterparts from Kenya, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia, countries of interest for the third largest phone maker in Europe.

According to the Country Sales Manager Nigeria, Mr. John Peters, the Dubai excursion enabled channel partners from Nigeria interact with other Wiko associates around the world to understand the Wiko brand culture, brand vision and brand attributes. The channel partners were drawn from key markets across the country, underlining the vision of the brand to take a significant share of the phone market from onset.

He added: “This is to enable them grasp the concept of how Wiko intends to operate in all the countries they will be launching their product. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Kenya and Nigeria. So all representatives from these countries were brought to Dubai so they can get a full detail of what Wiko is all about.”

Peters said it was important that Nigerian Channel Partners, “understand the Wiko story and know what specifically Wiko intends to do in each market. So market-wise, coverage-wise and channel-wise all these were explained to them at that meet in Dubai.”

Wiko comes with a good pedigree. It became the third largest smartphone vendor in France with over 2 million unit sales by end-2013. Wiko has subsidiaries in over 10 countries in Europe and outside of Europe.

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