A South African start-up is poised to become the first company in the continent to manufacture smartphones.

Onyx Connect of Johannesburg will take advantage of low production costs and rising demand to build handsets, tablets, and other devices based on google's Android platform. The privately backed company has raised approximately $10 million and will begin its production in the first quarter of the year.

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"We are talking to companies to manufacture handsets, laptops and possibly Android TV boxes," Andre Van Der Merwe, the company's sales director, said. The talks involve Google itself and Vodacom Limited.

Jorge Mendes, Vodacom's consumer sales and distribution executive, said that the company would welcome the opportunity to provide high-quality gadgets made in South Africa. 

Google, on the other hand, aims to use local production to increase sales in Africa, one of the regions where it is not the ultimate leader in browser sales. Google, which accounted only 32 percent of Africa's web traffic in September, trails behind Opera, with a 39 percent share.

In an email, Google said that it is important to ensure that affordable devices are available so that most Africans can access the benefits that come with it.

While most top of the range smartphones can be inaccessible to an average African, Onyx believes that it can produce a device in Johannesburg for as low as $30. And the device would already include a camera and 1 gigabyte of memory.

The company plans to set up a distribution center in Ethiopia within the next 18 months. The project is expected to create at least 600 jobs.

TagsGoogle, Google Chrome, South Africa