Safaricom to ditch feature phones

Kenya's biggest mobile operator, Safaricom, has said it will stop selling feature phones in its own retail stores an effort to increase smartphone penetration and bolster the East African country's digital content market.

Corporate affairs director, Nzioka Waita made the surprising announcement at the Mobile Web East Africa conference held in Nairobi last week.

"Safaricom is soon going to stop selling the cheap feature phones in all our retail outlets, as we try to skew the Kenyan market towards smartphones," Waita said.

Feature phones will be replaced by low-cost smartphones that "are now readily available in the country".

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