Condor at MWC: China in Africa?
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a brand from Algeria is presenting a smartphone that costs slightly more than an average monthly wage in the country. This is a sour pill to swallow and paints a rather ugly, albeit blurred, picture of the Algerian economy. There are also suspicions that China is involved.
The stand looks smart. White with grey, a large video screen and nice-looking attendants. This is the stand of Algerian smartphone manufacturer Condor, which unveiled its new flagship a few days ago.
However, the whole thing leaves a somewhat stale aftertaste.
The People's Democratic Republic of Algeria is not known as a technology metropolis. Algeria exports gas to Europe and has the 16th largest oil reserves in the world. Smartphones don't really fit in there.
The Algerian manufacturer Condor wants to change that. Condor wants to conquer the world with its Android smartphones. Condor is currently doing business in several African countries such as Benin, Morocco and Tunisia. Plus France. But Condor does not want to stop there. The visit to the Mobile World Congress with its smart stand is intended to open the door to the world.
The device that will allow Condor to open up new countries is the Allure M2. The phone, which comes in both black and gold, is prominently displayed at the stand. There are other phones at the back, but they are hardly noticed. The large video wall at the stand shows a small company profile and a lot of the Allure M2.
The hands-on: this isn't Algeria, is it?
The specs of the Condor Allure M2 sound good:
- 6-inch screen diagonal
- Double rear camera: 13 megapixel and 5 megapixel
- Double front camera: 20 megapixel and 8 megapixel
- F-Stop front: f/2.0 and f/2.4
- MediaTek Helio P25 Octa Core system-on-a-chip
- 4 or 6 GB RAM
- 64 or 128 GB internal memory
- 4010 mAh battery
When looking through the specs, it is noticeable that it hardly differs from the somewhat more prestigious no-name phones from Shenzhen. Great-sounding camera specs, relatively average RAM, a large battery and, above all, a MediaTek processor. There's not one feature that somehow points to China, but the package is generic enough to make you suspect that there's not much Algeria in it.
When using the device, this becomes even clearer. The Android distro on the Allure M2 is as generic as they come. With all the pastel-coloured and iPhone-inspired elements that can be found in generic Shenzhen distros.
Although the video wall at the booth shows happy Algerian workers in a Condor factory, I highly doubt that research and development happens in Algeria. It is possible that the devices are built in Algeria. But everything else smells strongly of China.
It's quite possible that the people in charge at Condor in Shenzhen will buy the rights to the phones and then import the individual parts to Algeria and assemble them there. This is not really a good business model that has no real future. Sure, it creates jobs in Algeria in the short term, but with the absence of any development in the country, the intelligence remains elsewhere. There are no Android developers in Algeria. Yet, there are.
The problem with the Allure M2
The Allure M2 is a phone that is probably a little too early on the market. Algeria is making a name for itself on the global market, if the patchy figures are anything to go by. The average wage of an Algerian is 35200 Algerian dinars, which is equivalent to around 290 francs. The Allure M2 costs 43900 dinars in Algerian retail, which is around 362 francs.
That's an absurdly high figure, even if the Swiss are able to make the gross price easy. Even the iPhone X with its 1359 francs list price at digitec doesn't cost that much in comparison. On average, a Swiss person earns 5979 francs, which, with a 42-hour week, means 36 hours of work before the iPhone is earned.
But: Wage levels have improved significantly. No wonder, because in 2002 the North African country was still in the throes of civil war, which probably didn't help the economy outside the military sector - which still employs 32 per cent of the country's workers.
All of these calculations are rough estimates and therefore correct on a hand-times-pi basis. But the picture is clear. The Allure M2 is not made for every Algerian. Or for every person in Benin, as the country regularly appears on lists of the poorest countries in the world.
What else needs to be said about the Algerian economy: Figures are missing. Wages from the agricultural sector - 14% of the population - are missing, as are wages from financial professions. In general, the country's economic and political situation is quite opaque. But at least there is now a smartphone from Algeria. The only question is who benefits from the smartphone: a country that only ended a bloody civil war in 2002 after almost a decade and has since been ruled by an 80-year-old who was democratically elected with over 80 per cent of the vote, or a few investors, financial sharks and companies in China?
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