Guyana's Oil Money Changed Which Phones Sell There. Your Order Mix Should Follow.
Most reseller order sheets for Guyana still look like they were written in 2018. Cheap entry phones, a few mid-tier Samsungs, nothing above about $250. That mix was correct once. It is not correct now, and the gap is costing money.
GDP per capita went from under $7,000 to $32,414 in six years
Guyana posted real GDP growth of 19.3% in 2025 on a nominal economy of about USD 27.1 billion, and the IMF projects another 16.2% for 2026. GDP per capita climbed from under USD 7,000 in 2019 to USD 32,414 in 2025, driven by roughly 645,000 barrels a day out of the Stabroek Block. Those figures come from the Hope Research Group breakdown of Guyana's 2026 economy, citing World Bank and IMF data.
Averages hide a lot. Oil money is not spread evenly across 800,000 people. But the direction is not in dispute, and phone retail is one of the first categories where rising disposable income shows up. People upgrade their phone long before they upgrade their house.
Four networks, and one of them changed its name
GTT rebranded as ONE Communications in September 2024. Digicel is still Digicel. Green Gibraltar, trading as GG Cell, holds a licence for 5G in the populated coastal regions, and ENet has rolled out VoLTE-based 5G service. Digicel also completed the Deep Blue One submarine cable linking Guyana to French Guiana, Suriname and Trinidad. The market summary is on BuddeComm's Guyana telecoms report, updated September 2026.
Why a reseller should care about network names: warranty claims, unlock questions and "why won't this phone make calls" complaints all trace back to which carrier the customer is on and what the handset supports.
VoLTE support is now a buying criterion, not a spec-sheet detail
ENet is delivering 5G service built on VoLTE. As operators lean harder on 4G and 5G for voice, a handset that can hold data but cannot place a VoLTE call becomes a return waiting to happen. This is the single most common quiet defect in aged inventory: the phone works perfectly on Wi-Fi in your shop and fails on the customer's SIM.
Test it before you accept a lot. Put a live local SIM in a sample unit, turn Wi-Fi off, and place a call. Thirty seconds of work saves a month of arguments.
The mid-tier gap between a $60 phone and a flagship
The classic Guyana order was heavy at the bottom. What we are seeing move now is the band above it: Samsung A-series in the 128GB and 256GB configurations, Motorola G-series, and refurbished iPhones one or two generations back. Buyers in that band are trading up from a first smartphone, not buying their first one. They care about camera, storage and battery, in that order.
That does not mean drop the entry tier. It means stop letting it be 80% of the order. A practical starting split is roughly half entry, forty percent mid-tier, ten percent premium or recent refurbished iPhone, then adjust after one cycle based on what actually sells through.
Georgetown and the interior are two different order sheets
ONE Communications has been extending fibre to more than two-thirds of premises, and 5G licences target the populated coast. Coverage inland is thinner, and Starlink's licence application is still being assessed by the government. A shop in Georgetown can sell a data-hungry premium handset with a straight face. A shop serving the interior is still selling battery life and durability. If you supply both, do not send them the same box.
Building the order out of Miami
Our minimum is 30 units and they can be assorted, which is exactly how you test a new mix without gambling a full container on a guess. Pricing and freight detail for the market sit on our wholesale phones page for Guyana. If you are buying across several islands, the Caribbean overview covers routing, and the Samsung wholesale page lists the A-series configurations that move fastest in this band.
Guyana is not a large market by headcount. It is a fast-changing one, and the resellers who adjust their mix first will own the mid-tier before everyone else notices it exists.
Want this week's stock sheet? Message us on WhatsApp or register as a new client.
