{"id":53967,"date":"2014-03-06T15:52:21","date_gmt":"2014-03-06T13:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=53967"},"modified":"2014-03-06T15:52:21","modified_gmt":"2014-03-06T13:52:21","slug":"mtn-steppa-smartphone-a-huge-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/53967\/mtn-steppa-smartphone-a-huge-success\/","title":{"rendered":"MTN Steppa smartphone a “huge success”"},"content":{"rendered":"

MTN<\/a>\u00a0says its\u00a0low cost smartphone, the\u00a0MTN Steppa<\/a>, has been a “huge success” since its launch in\u00a0January.<\/p>\n

MTN SA CEO, Zunaid Bulbulia said that the initial batch of between 50,000 – 60,000 units “didn’t touch sides in our warehouse” and has been a big success in terms of sell through.<\/p>\n

MTN launched the Steppa as an Android smartphone that could be sold for less than $50 making it the \u201cmost affordable, easy to use and high performance touchscreen Android smartphone in the country\u201d.<\/p>\n

The smartphone features a 3.5-inch touch screen display, FM radio and a 2MP camera with video recording.<\/p>\n

The MTN Steppa is based on a Qualcomm Reference Design, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.<\/p>\n

It is available in selected retail stores for R499 on MTN\u2019s pre-paid price plans. It also comes with a standard free Social Networking Bundle for the first three months.<\/p>\n

Mike Fairon<\/a>, GM of products and solutions at MTN, recently said:\u00a0\u201cWhat we have seen on this device is that the return rates, or the fault rates are at the same range as any tier 1 manufacturer.”<\/p>\n

Fairon said that their research into user habits guided the development of the MTN Steppa, which is behind the success of the device. It is, however, only the beginning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Steppa phone is part of a bigger program, and we\u2019ve looked into the future in terms of the next type of devices which are coming,\u201d said Fairon.<\/p>\n

Bulbulia said that the group would continue to monitor the user patters of the device to determine whether there is an uplift in data usage.<\/p>\n

Sifiso Dabengwa, group chief executive and president of MTN told Moneyweb<\/a>: “We are testing it in South Africa and we are looking at rolling it out in all our other operations.”<\/p>\n

More on MTN<\/h3>\n

MTN SA announces job cuts<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n

MTN SA earnings disappoint<\/a><\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MTN says its low cost smartphone, the MTN Steppa, has been a “huge success” since its launch in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":54014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26,1704,28,7564,523,1890],"class_list":["post-53967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-headline","tag-mike-fairon","tag-mtn","tag-mtn-steppa","tag-qualcomm","tag-sifiso-dabengwa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53967"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54016,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53967\/revisions\/54016"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}