By Prince Osuagwu
Chief executive officer of Etisalat Nigeria, Steve Evans, has said that his company was using the opportunity of the Mobile world congress in Barcelona to negotiate with global phone manufacturers to see how prices of Smartphones below the $50-barrier can be made possible for his Nigerian subscribers.

Evans said the move was considering that even though the prices of Smartphone have indeed crashed in the last two years, the average costs are still about $100. Evans, spoke with Vanguard in an interview at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday, saying that Etisalat was fully aware that majority of Nigeria’s over 90 million phone subscribers access the internet through their mobile phones.

Statistics have already shown that 70 percent of Nigerianmobile users visit social network sites such as Facebook, Twitter whilst 65 percent use their mobile phones for e-mail. In October 2011, Etisalat rolled out a customised 3G-enabled Smartphone running on the android Operating System

(OS), which according to Evans still remains the cheapest Smartphone in the country. However, Evans said Etisalat is already in discussions with equipment manufacturers at the Mobile World Congress to find other  ways of making available a wide range of affordable Smartphone to the broader Nigerian population.

For  the Etisalat CEO, his company was keenly interested in offering dual SIM phones to Nigerian

customers. “We have been meeting the handset manufacturers and saying what is the next step in Smartphone. How can we make Smartphone available to an even bigger section of the population in Nigeria by bringing down price points?

“We also think that having a dual SIM phone if you are Etisalat Nigeria is not something to be afraid of. We are quite happy to have competitors SIM in the second slot because it is more convenient for our customers. It means they can always switch between networks, they can compare the price, they can compare the quality and we are not afraid to do that. We are asking the manufacturers to provide us with a bigger range of dual SIM phones.”