The world's biggest mobile phone chipmaker, Qualcomm, announced yesterday that Nairobi, Kenya, is now home to its East Africa regional head office.
The office, which is already operational, is there to support Qualcomm's partners, operators, device manufacturers, network operators, retailers, distributors and mobile application developers in that region.
Qualcomm says the hub will at first conduct these business operations for Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Rwanda; but that, at a later date, its Nairobi base will serve the whole of Central Africa as well.
The company's move to establish a regional footing in the Kenyan capital comes at a time when Africa has become the world's fastest-growing mobile market, according to industry group Groupe Speciale Mobile Association.
Demand for mobile phone processors that power smartphones is also predicted to soar in Africa as the number of 3G subscribers on the continent is forecast to grow by 636%, between 2010 and 2015, says Billy Owino, Qualcomm's director of business development in East Africa.
“By partnering and working closely with the operators, developers, device manufacturers and the policy makers, we can definitely achieve a robust ecosystem that leverages Qualcomm's technologies (3G and later 4G) for the benefit of the consumers, whose first experience... of access to the Internet will be on the mobile phone.”
Owino, a native Kenyan, has moved from his previous posting as Qualcomm's director of business development in Johannesburg to Nairobi, to head up the mobile chipmaker's operations there.
Business has been booming for Qualcomm as its profits have soared thanks to strong global demand for smartphones.
Its share price on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month hit a 12-month high of $60.73, as the company at the end of last year reported a profit $1.395 billion, higher than its end-of-2010 profit of $1.17 billion.