Archives For Mobile

Mobile anything is big these days, and there is a good reason to it!

Smart phones are all the rage now. Increasingly consumers are upgrading their devices and subsequently getting introduced to more variety and utility. Marketers are however still playing catch-up as marketing budgets on mobile are still relatively small compared to other engagement channels. We cannot blame them though, as the spend per brand across board has reduced and there is a perpetual fight to defend the use of a particular channel, which often times is directly proportional to goods moved or service requests received.

The biggest issue that I see, is that the metrics that need to be measured are unknown and hence it is difficult to justify spend on mobile. In a differentiated market environment, not every action directed to the consumer needs to directly translate to movement of product. This is where mobile strategy comes in, with the creation of campaign objectives, determining what qualifies as campaign success, and identifying the tools to measure these results. Continue Reading…

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It is said that Africa is the last frontier in many ways, having vast resources yet untapped or undiscovered. This rings true on many levels when looking at the amount of knowledge inherent in our culture and history. In this day of increasing access to the internet and growing numbers of mobile subscribers, an ecosystem that supports the creation, aggregation, distribution and consumption of content has been created. This newly created markets are heavy consumers of content as shown by research, with many in Africa accessing the internet for the first time on a mobile device in their quest for content. It has been unfortunate though that a lot of the content consumed is foreign in nature; using the term loosely to mean not originated from Africa or being targeted to the African audience. Continue Reading…

Technology, no matter how brilliant , no matter the promise, is useless unless it gains traction and goes mainstream. Over the years I have noticed that it is not a shortage of ideas and concepts that exists but rather a lack of buy-in from key institutions or industries that would see solutions grow legs.

I  believe that certain technology concepts are best adopted by a market once one or two big entities, think government or blue chip fast moving consumer goods outfit, latch on, and use the solution to derive competitive advantage or other value as measured by its key performance indicators. Continue Reading…

Factors  that govern the economics of service and product delivery are the same across different industries and sectors. To draw a parallel with the mobile industry and give perspective, it is said to be more expensive per unit to transport goods within Africa than it is to Europe. Poor infrastructure by way of dilapidated or nonexistent roads, railway lines with different gauges, poor logistical planning and business models have made intra Africa trade a costly nightmare. Plans to address this have been floated, with the ideas being a focused on consolidated pan-african road and rail networks.

So how does this related to uptake of local content on mobile? In the rapidly changing world of technology, mobile network operators introduced mobile data, that has seen an increase in the consumption of services brought about by increased mobile phone utility. With this increased uptake, there has also been an increase in the demand for services that rely heavily on mobile data. This  has seen all mobile network operators invest capital to own shares in the various undersea cables that connect us to the rest of the world to reduce reliance on satellite connectivity that is expensive. This initial surge by consumers on mobile data was driven by the need to access information and content which more often than not was created or resided outside the country. According to the State of the Mobile Web report released in July 2012 by Opera, the top 10 visited properties are Facebook, Google, Twitter, Waptrick, Tagged.com, Eskimi, Goal.com, BBC, Nation and Wikipedia. Of these properties, only one would be considered local, and I think differently about the social networks on the list as they would probably dominate the ranking in other countries as well . Continue Reading…

technology_human-rights_mbugua-njihiaWhen thinking about innovation, more so the disruptive kind we tend to focus on things like market research, disruption quotient , user growth, monetization, venture capital and the many other issues that may be pertinent in nurturing a good idea through the growth cycles to profitability or a good exit.

Data is king in a consumer centered marketplace and calls for open data in its various forms, from both governments and private sector has taken center stage with many initiatives setup to mine data and offer new perspectives on consumers that lay hidden. Data scientists are constantly creating and tweaking algorithms to make better sense of  the data that the world churns out daily. This all comes together further when combined with hardware evolution. Continue Reading…

Entrepreneurship is not a bed of roses and those that choose to pursue it either by personal desire, family pedigree or forced by circumstance deserve a level of respect for playing the game, whether or not the venture tanks or breaks into the sustainability league.

Technology companies, especially those that are looking to be net producers of value, face their own unique set of challenges that are constantly evolving. Africa is lighting up with hundreds of companies looking to stake their claim in a world made smaller and more competitive by the increasing number of data pipes landing on our shores, connecting us to the rest of the world.

This afro-optimism, partially fueled by the constantly stoked fires of Silicon Valley successes by way of impressive venture capital infusions and successful exits, still comes with the hard lessons for many techpreneurs who are in the trenches. Continue Reading…

Everyone has made a wish list of one flavor or another, especially now with the festive season and new year fast approaching. I have one of my own, that has nothing to do with Santa’s benevolence tied with having been a good CEO this past twelve months  or new year resolutions to be home by   every day. My list touches on people and organizations that I think would help advance valuable  tech deployments and innovation in 2013. Continue Reading…

We live in a physical world and most of what we consume does for the most part come in physical state. However, the move to virtual communities has necessitated the adaptation of services to meet the new demand. The concept of the long tail, moves opportunity away from a list, chart and headline driven  market which is what has dominated the ecosystems in various industries, to a state where niche is seen as the next big opportunity in content creation, delivery, consumption and monetization.
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The mobile application craze has seen the creation of usefully and not so useful utilities that millions of consumers around the world download on a daily basis. The distribution of these applications is via brand specific and independent app stores such as the Nokia Store, Google Play, Windows Marketplace, BlackBerry App world,  Apple App Store, Amazon App Store and GetJar.

For the major players, the process of creating and distributing of mobile applications via their store has the requisite checks and balances with some having human lead quality assurance to check on application behavior and content. Strict guidelines are put in place to ensure a consistent user experience and to protect against exploitation  of end users by malicious applications. Continue Reading…