Just 6 months ago, Safaricom announced they’d sold over 600,000 Neon Units in the country in 2019. Well, Google in a blog post while announcing the new ‘Camera Go’ app, has said that their partnership with Safaricom has seen the company sell over 900,000 Android GO Phones.
These Android GO devices are part of Safaricom’s ‘Maisha Ni Digital‘ campaign with their NEON line of affordable smartphones.
The blog says that 53% of these smartphones have been sold to women. Which is an important number, because in Sub-Saharan Africa there is a significant gender gap in mobile internet usage.
Last year, when celebrating the 600k milestone, Safaricom Acting CEO said:
“We introduced the Neon Smartphone range to cater to customers seeking quality and reliable smartphones at an affordable price. The devices are especially designed to appeal to first-time smartphone users and have been received quite well, emerging as our most preferred smartphone range.”
The currently available Neon Smartphones in Kenya are priced as follows:
| Neon Lite (4G and VoLTE) | KES 4,999 |
| Neon Nova LTE (4G and VoLTE) | KES 4,599 |
| Neon Ray (4G and VoLTE) | KES 3,999 |
| Neon Storm | KES 3,349 |
| Neon Kicka 4 | KES 3,199 (Masoko only price) |
With such success, we can expect a new range of Neon phones for 2020 to come any time soon. These should be significantly more powerful, running Android 10, and will bring Google’s new Camera GO app which is tailor-made for Android GO devices. Camera GO is simple, easy to use, storage conscious, and brings features like Portrait Mode to the everyone.
Do you have an Android GO device? Is it from Safaricom? What do you like most about it?
