Last year, there was a bit of buzz about the number of Huawei IDEO Android phones in Kenya.
Much of this buzz came from a June 2011 Technology Review article which reported, "In Kenya, the price, approximately $80, was low enough to win more than 350,000 buyers to date." http://www.technologyreview.com/communications/37877 I've heard that 350k number repeated lots of times (I've used it myself) and it's never felt quite right. A few days ago, I went digging for an answer and turns out the 350k figure is probably wrong. In May 2011, Huawei, the device manufacturer, said they had sold 60k IDEOS devices in May 2011 and were on track to hit 100k. http://www.huawei.com/africa/en/catalog.do?id=761. In February 2012, Bob Collymore, CEO of Safaricom (the cell operator), said they had sold 170k. https://twitter.com/#!/bobcollymore/status/172736353132494848 http://www.ihub.co.ke/blog/2012/01/fireside-chat-bob-collymore-safaricom-ceo-at-the-ihub I don't know where the 350k number comes from (maybe an internal Google number?), but if you are using it, it's probably wrong. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I'd love to know. Yaw PS. Thanks to iHub Research for their help! http://www.research.ihub.co.ke/pages/home.php
