Kazi Najib Ashraf: my three years of mobile consulting

Trade barriers and regional taxation only brings opportunities for the business community. How traders adapt to the new reality will define their success for decades to come. Here’s my story, well, professional story for the past 3 years when I had decided to take up consulting as a full-time occupation. Little did I know that I was jumping at a time of a historic change in the industry. I can split the timelines into three distinct years, each representing a dominating business wave. Here we go:

2016: Business as usual with slight inklings of Used Devices creeping up through the cracks. 2017: Dominance of the Used Device Business and drastic reduction of major traders. 2018: Annihilation of traditional Used Business due to refurb devices and a haze in approach. Going through the trends would help the traders and the suppliers to better understand the current market scenarios as well as prepare them for the future. I won’t go into the details of the specifics or the results of the projects in this article, as we can always do that over a nice cup of coffee. Let’s dive in and get to the details:

2016: Samsung and Apple had been dominating the trading business, and the likes of Huawei were slowly trying to catch up. With three contracts under my belt, I had to manoeuvre the time to ensure the best results for my clients. For professional reasons I cannot disclose the names of the companies here. The first project was to work on securing the distribution of Nokia Mobiles for a given market. The hype of the brand had been earth shattering and the world was ready to rock back to the early 2000s. Trading margins had been eroding and Nokia was a ray of hope for the major traders. At the same instance, credit insurance was becoming tight and the last nail in the coffin had been the default of the biggest trader in the UAE. Trading got its initial jolt. The second project was the transformation of the mobile trading environment to include gaming consoles and software. Mobile traders saw the vertical as a natural extension of the business with serious volumes being traded across the region. With almost So here are the lessons from 2016:

Mobile brands were dying off and new ones were coming on the horizon. Major traders lost steam and exited the market. Mobile traders sought new verticals for the business such as gaming. IT players tried their hands on mobile phones for distribution in their familiar territories. 2017: This was the year of Used Mobiles in the Middle East with the base in Dubai. Used Devices flew in from across the world with legitimate grading and acceptable quality. In the meantime, trading margins for regular devices thinned out further. Please note that Used Devices never originate from the Middle East but are always imported; there is no infrastructure for local buy-back, grading etc.