Kazi Najib Ashraf is a Telecoms Professional and a Blogger and he is a contributor to www.handelot.com, he can be contacted at kazi.najib@playtorium.com.

With a population of 92 million, Egypt is the #1 Market for Mobility in North Africa and the Second Largest in MEA. Ala'a Ahmed Abd El-Baky is a Telecoms expert based in Cairo and he shared the market dynamics. With the recent turmoil in the country, the currency has been fluctuating sporadically. In January 2016 the exchange rate had been 8 EGP to a US$ and it now stands at 18EGP. There has been an impact on the prices due to the VAT as well so the consumers have become extremely price sensitive and choosy. On top of this, the product life cycle has increased as the people tend to keep the mobile phones for a longer time.
There has been an influx of out of warranty repairs for mobile devices because of the long life time of the products. Interestingly new brands have taken advantage of this situation and have replaced the incumbents in droves. A brand to watch especially is Tecno.
According to Ala'a Ahmed Abd El-Baky the operators started (shyly) introducing their branded devices again, only 4G products to drive the data penetration, decent offers have been introduced by the three players, this could be a game changer if they do it right.