Report: Lenovo Laptops, and LG television brands most popular among Kenyan consumers

Data Fintech has been working with PigiaMe to come up with an Electronics Trends Market Report. The reports provide an exhaustive analytic on what went on in the Kenya Electronic market last year.

In the last two reports we have shared with on TechTrendsKE, we told you how HTC beat Huawei to become the most sought after mobile device in Kenya last year. We also told you how most consumers who made camera purchases on the different PigiaMe platforms preferred buying a Nikon camera over Canon.

A recent update from the Electronics Trend Report report now shows that Lenovo laptops were the most popular brands among consumers, than Apple laptops. Kenyan consumers demand for Lenovo than Apple laptops stood at 70% of the time, during the year 2016.

The report found out that the two brands accounted for 22.1% of the laptops by stock value in the Kenyan market.

In the 20-40k price segment, representing 40% of the Kenyan Market, the two brands are performed modestly with a market share per stock value at 11.85% for Apple and 8.5% for Lenovo.

Apple’s brand popularity surged during Q4-2016 and the report attributes this to the release of MacBook Pro in October 2016. The release of the new MacBook Pro, helped Apple to increase stock value starting below KSh. 250k in August 2016 to reach KSh. 1 million in October 2016.

For the first half of the year 2016, Lenovo lead Apple with a small margin, while in the second half, Apple took the lead as the most purchased brand. The listing value for both the brands has a declining trend from the start of 2016 to the end of the year. The report, however, notes that the supply went lower in January 2017, an indication that there are lesser dealers listing for the products. From August to November 2016, the supply of Apple went up suddenly. This, the report says is because of the majority of the laptops listed in this range were older versions of and merchants decided to increase their stock before the release of the new MacBook Pro which was due in October 2016

In the Ksh 20-40k price segment, Apple and Lenovo take a lesser share compared to the global market, from 22.1% to 20.1% in the segment.

In the television segment, high-end televisions were more popular taking the top spot at 75%  of the time during the year. Both the low-end and high-end television segments, however, increased in listing value in terms of merchant supply. The low-end segment recorded a 12.8 times growth whereas the high-end segment registered a 6.4 times growth from February 2016 to January 2017 indicating a strong appetite of electronic dealers for both segments.

The total market valuation of high-end TVs listed, according to the data is Ksh 132.6m which represent 27.84% of the total listings against 5% for the low-end TVs.

LG was the leading brand in Kenya in terms of popularity whereas Samsung was in supply value in 2016. The two brands, however, dominated the high-end segment throughout, accounting for 57% of the supply in the segment. In the low-end segment, TLC and Hisense took the larger share of the market in the Ksh.10k-20k price segment to 42% from 23% in the Ksh .>40k price segment.

The market insights below are provided by Data Fintech, based on data collected from the online marketplace pigiame.co.ke, over a period of 13 months (January 2016 to January 2017.)