Business Smartphones in Nigeria BlackBerry babes
商業 智能手機在尼日利亞 黑莓女孩
Its devices are still popular there, but Africa won't save RIM
黑莓手機在這里依然暢銷,但非洲不會拯救RIM
"DO YOU know how many times you have embarrassed me because you have refused to buy me a BlackBerry?"
在一個臟兮兮的停車場,凱莎猛的捶打著男友的胸膛,大聲尖叫,"你知道么?
Keisha screams in a dusty car park, jabbing her boyfriend's chest.
就因為你不愿給我買黑莓手機,我老是被人看不起。
Daniel says he can't afford it until next month. It is the final straw for Keisha.
丹尼爾說下個月他就能把錢湊夠。這也是凱莎最后一根救命稻草了。
This is a scene from "BlackBerry Babes", a Nigerian film about women wooing men into buying them such a smartphone.
這是尼日利亞電影"黑莓女孩"中的一個場景,內容講的是女人讓男人給她們買一個類似的智能手機。
The plot may be absurd, but its sense of fashion is spot on.
情節看上去很荒唐,卻真實反映了當地流行的風尚。
RIM, the maker of the device, may get clobbered elsewhere in the world (its market share in America has dropped to 1.6%), but in Nigeria BlackBerrys are still hot.
手機廠商RIM在世界其他地方(其美國市場份額跌至1.6%)的市場可能日漸衰落,但在尼日利亞,黑莓手機依然很暢銷。
The country's obsession with BlackBerrys is part of a wider trend: although the market share of smartphones is still small, they are becoming more popular all over Africa.
尼日利亞的"黑莓手機熱"反映出更廣范圍內的一大趨勢:盡管智能手機在非洲的市場份額依舊很小,但它們在變得越來越炙手可熱。
They allow those unable to afford computers to browse the internet for a few dollars a month.
對于那些沒能力購買計算機上網的人來說,使用智能手機就能解決這一問題,而每月所需花費不過幾美元而已。
Thumb-tapping phone users generate 67% of online searches in Nigeria.
在尼日利亞觸屏手機用戶產生67%的在線搜索流量。
More than 4m of its citizens own a smartphone, about 4% of mobile subscribers.
有400多萬市民擁有智能手機,占全部移動用戶的4%。
If half of these use a BlackBerry, it is because RIM has managed to attract the younger set, says Nicholas Jotischky, an analyst at Informa, a market researcher.
一個市場研究員,Informa的分析師Nicholas Jotischky說,由于RIM將客戶群定位于年輕群體,所以有半數的用戶使用黑莓手機。
Users particularly fancy the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service, which allows them to send texts for nothing.
用戶特別喜歡黑莓手機的短信(BBM)功能,這可以讓他們免費發送消息 (通過數據方式-如GPRS發送,不是SMS)
"I have a BlackBerry to talk to friends—and boys. If you have a BlackBerry people see you in a certain light," says Diana Ogwuegbu, a student in Lagos, who has hundreds of BBM friends. Savvy businesses use BBM to market their products.
Diana Ogwuegbu是一名來自拉各斯的學生,她擁有眾多BBM朋友,表示,"我用黑莓手機跟朋友聊天—包括男友,擁有黑莓手機會讓朋友對我刮目相看,"一些精明的企業用BBM推廣產品。
BlackBerrys are quite secure, but RIM's market share is not.
黑莓手機安全性很高,但RIM的市場份額就沒那么樂觀了。
Although Nokia, another troubled phonemaker, still boasts high sales figures in Africa,
盡管另一家深陷泥潭的手機廠商諾基亞在非洲依然具有超高的銷售業績,
it is Chinese firms such as Huawei, ZTE and Tecno which are more likely to erode RIM's market share: they offer cheaper handsets and smartphones with two SIM cards (which allows customers to use two different networks—handy in a country where wireless service is unreliable).
更有可能搶占RIM的市場份額的反而是華為、中興和德卡諾這樣的中國公司:這些廠商的手機和智能手機有兩個SIM卡槽(這樣用戶能使用兩個不同的網絡,這對于一個信號不好的國家來說很實用),而且價格更便宜。
RIM may also suffer as Nigerian operators start to offer Apple's iPhone.
隨著尼日利亞的運營商引入蘋果手機,RIM也在遭受同樣的困境。
So Nigeria, or Africa for that matter, is unlikely to save RIM.
因此不論是尼日利亞,還是非洲,都無法拯救RIM。
For that, other things have to go right, in particular the launch of devices that use the new BlackBerry 10 software in January.
所以RIM必須做出正確的決策,特別是明年1月要推出使用BlackBerry 10軟件的新手機。
Nollywood may soon have to use another storyline: being spurned for still using a BlackBerry.
諾萊塢很快就會有新故事講了:誰還用黑莓誰就會成為笑柄。