A year after Ashish Thakkar, CEO of the Mara Group, pledged at the government's inaugural Investment Conference to open a smartphone factory in SA, the facility will be officially launched on Thursday.
The opening of the factory at the Dube Trade Port in Durban, to be presided over by President Cyril Ramaphosa, comes after the Mara Group launched two smartphones on Monday in Rwanda, which it described as the first "Made in Africa" models, adding that their manufacture in Rwanda would give a boost to Rwanda's ambitions of becoming a regional technology hub.
The company also assembles smartphones in Egypt, Ethiopia and Algeria, but imports the components, Thakkar said.
"We are actually the first who are doing manufacturing. We are making the motherboards, we are making the sub-boards during the entire process," he said. "There are over 1,000 pieces a phone."
Thakkar said the Rwanda plant had cost $50m (about R742m) and could make 10,000 phones a day.
At least one South African mobile operator has confirmed that it is in talks to distribute Mara smartphones.
MTN said: "We are in the process of approving them as a potential supplier. Differentiation is always welcome in the smartphone industry. They have pitched their product as 'high-end' devices, so this means that they will be competing against the likes of Samsung, Huawei brands."
MTN said locally produced smartphones meant that "the product inspection process will be more convenient, stock could be easier to procure and we would not have to wait six to eight weeks for manufacturing and shipment".
Commenting on the South African factory, Tefo Mohapi, a technology analyst and CEO of iAfrikan Digital, said SA only had 7% smartphone penetration although the market was saturated in terms of cellphone ownership.
"It's not enough to just say we're made in Africa or assembled in SA," Mohapi said. "We've seen many other brands come and go over the years. It's a very tough market to break into."
He said not only would Mara have to convince potential customers to "forgo their current brand", but that it would have the added challenge of satisfying consumers' aspirations.
Vodacom declined to comment on potential discussions with Mara. It added: "The market is brand sensitive and dominated by strong local and international brands which means new brands will need to invest considerably in marketing activities.
SA's smartphone market is dominated by Samsung, which holds the largest share at 32%, followed by Mobicel, Huawei and Hisense, Mohapi said.
