Transsion’s latest digital media play – iAfrikan
What happened: Transsion Holdings has partnered with Shanghai-based China Literature to load its reading app onto all of its mobile devices sold in Africa. The 30,000 literary works planned for initial distribution will be in English and come from China Literature’s existing collection. In a statement, Transsion said that there are “huge opportunities” in the Africa’s digital reading space and that it “noticed an increasing demand for online reading content” from its customers there.
Why it’s important: This partnership follows a joint venture between Transsion and Netease to build the BoomPlay music streaming app, which Transsion also pre-installs onto all its mobile devices sold in Africa. BoomPlay’s reported 46 million users would make it the largest music streaming app in Africa, and provides a reference point for the potential reach of China Literature’s app. Transsion held 48.7% of Africa’s mobile phone market and 34.3% of its smartphone market in 2018, and recently reiterated its confidence that it will continue to dominate against competitors like Huawei, which has only a 9.9% market share.