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From Phones to E-Bikes: China’s Transsion Targets Africa’s Mobility Sector

For almost two decades, the Chinese smartphone giant behind Africa’s most popular mobile brands -Tecno, Infinix, and Itel- has grown to dominate the continent’s handset market. Now, it is making a bold move into Africa’s booming electric mobility sector with its TankVolt e-bikes, which have already become ...

Smartphone Sales Rebounded Last Year in Mideast and African Countries, Led by Chinese Brands

Smartphone sales in the Mideast and Africa rose sharply last year, led by Tecno, a subsidiary of Shenzhen-based Transsion Holdings, which surpassed Samsung in market share for the first time.  Overall, sales in the region increased by 30% in Q4 2023 ...

Google to Partner with Transsion, China’s Phone Giant in Africa

Google announced that it struck a global strategic partnership with Transsion, a Chinese maker of mobile phones beloved across the Global South. Together, the two will target emerging markets like Africa via cooperation on the Android operating system, online advertising, and Google Cloud services. ...

Transsion’s Nearly Two-Year Run of Uninterrupted Growth in Africa Comes to an End

Two years of the pandemic, supply chain disruptions and slowing economies in Africa finally caught up with Shenzhen-based African mobile phone giant Transsion. The company released its first-quarter results earlier this month that revealed drops in revenues (1.8%), profits (7.6%), and smartphone sales (7%) compared to the ...

China’s Tecno Brand Dominates Kenyan Mobile Phone Market

Kenya's mobile phone market shrank by 9% in the first quarter of the year, according to new data from technology consultancy IDC, but even a drop that large didn't budge Transsion's Tecno brand from the top spot in the market. Tecno led ...

Analysis from Cobus van Staden

Revealing Reactions to China’s Festival of Optics

In terms of geopolitical optics, this week was nothing short of a banquet. It served up at least two sets of images that seem to crystallize our historical moment and that will live on in the Wikipedia of history as shorthand for where the world was in 2025.
One is the waves of uncannily synchronized soldiers and a bewildering array of high-tech weaponry gliding down Beijing’s Chang’an Avenue. The ...

Shenzhen-Based Transsion Targets South African Youth Market With New Low-Priced Offering

The Chinese-owned African mobile phone giant Transsion is targeting South Africa's youth market with the launch of the Vision1 Pro smartphone from its Itel brand -- a 6.5-inch waterproof device that costs around $120. Although Transsion's suite of brands dominates the ...

China’s Tecno Knocks Off Samsung to Become Africa’s #1 Smartphone

Tecno, for the first time, edged out Samsung to become the top smartphone brand in Africa in 2020 thanks to a steady stream of new, affordable devices backed with robust marketing budgets, according to the latest data from Counterpoint Research’s Market Monitor service.