It may feel abit dumb to start off like this…but any kiosk owner will tell you this. If you all stock the same nyanya skuma, you will be left with no recourse but to compete on price. The kaching comes with setting yourself apart…I would stop here and have you call me and pay me to walk you back to the school of basics but am in a good mood today.
Like I told you before, you better stop this price war maneno or you will all soon go out of business or best bet see massive hemorrhages on your bottom line. Micheal Joseph has said time and again – he has investors to take care of, and I have to agree with him on that point, coz I would expect a divided on my shares, if I had bought like 1 million of those “papers” when the country was going green and this not alluding to the referendum. My boy Rene is willing to take a hit for the next 5 years because he has a big brother with deep pockets. Deep pockets get depleted, and if your strategy doesn’t work out, you will be out of a job – tail tucked and the Kenya operation will be spun to some other hapless investor with big visions and their head in the clouds, with grand plans of a turnaround. Rene was on Business Daily explaining their strategy…you will remember the Vuka tariff that was discontinued…hmmm
Bwana Atul of Yu, jumped over the cliff late last night and put it out that they too had “amuad” and dunked prices to 5cts per second or more directly 3 bob per minute and 50cts per sms on onnet messaging.
Mickael Ghossein has been quiet thus far after the sparing between the Pinks, Greens and Blacks, but I kinda guess he too is thinking of their new lower price point. I am sorely hoping that his decisions will have a good measure of thought and not some knee jerk reflex. continue reading »
The battle for ARPU has everyone touting their latest acquisitions – pun intended. Using the analogy of Westlands bound matatus…everyone just got a 56 seater save for Micheal Joseph who is going for the full blown 100 seater bus…dubbed 4G courtesy of the panel beating shop called Huawei.
The transport industry in Kenya is much like its sister telecommunication … and the telco guys could learn a thing or two from. Guys will take the matatu with the most features and comfort; after all…don’t all matatus and buses have seats as default offering in this post Michuki state? continue reading »
Many don’t know the true origins of the Mpesa (read it here ) service offered by Safaricom which has been a runaway success for Micheal Joseph and crew… a true cash cow.
How do you, after all, beat a success like M-PESA? Iceni assured me that M-PESA was just the beginning. Using the mobile as a platform, Iceni plan to create developmental services that penetrate other spheres —m-health, agribusiness. They further predicted that the mobile will soon begin to revolutionize these other spaces as well. This is a very exciting proposition. If the mobile phone can penetrate and transform financial sector, which is dominated by old and powerful players, imagine what it can do in these other spaces – Olga Morawczynski
What matters is that a scion from the development house that brought Mpesa to life – Sagentia ,a technology consultancy firm based out of Cambridge has spun off a new service dubbed RedCloud under Iceni Mobile. RedCloud is being positioned as the financial hub for emerging markets and word is that the tools and feature sets will rock Mpesa and its cousin Mkesho. From what I have picked up, they are looking at a mix of mobile money aggregation and mobile banking, with the issuance of loans to young entrepreneurs being a key strategy. I gather they have been courting all manner of micro-finance institutions…and not just in Kenya as they get set for the market roll-out.
RedCloud’s purpose is to be the leading provider of cloud computing technology to financial and associated services in emerging markets. The RedCloud team hope know that their platform will have a significant positive impact in bringing financial end economic benefits the world’s 4 billion under banked that include over 50 million young Entrepreneurs.
The Iceni team behind RedCloud is quite formidable and I look forward to seeing how they roll out the product. Their profiles in a snapshot: continue reading »
When The United Republic of Tanzania passed the Tanzania Communication Act no. 18 of 1993 it lead to the opening of the telecommunications markets and the establishment of Tanzania Communication Commission. It later merged with Tanzania Broadcasting Commission and became the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA, www.tcra.go.tz/), established by the TCRA Act no.12 of 2003. In September 2005, the Government of Tanzania and Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) introduced a converged licensing framework and the concept of technology neutrality, which was meant to enhance the provision of communication services in the country. It has worked and the mobile market in Tanzania has been growing at more than 60% per year in the last five years and passed the 17 million subscriber mark in December 2009 (TCRA 2009).
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Rwanda has a very clear vision about ICT as a tool for development, which is well articulated by the authorities. However, the aftermath of the 1994 genocide and a mono/duopolistic market structure of MTN Rwanda and Rwandatel until 2006 have halted the developments in the sector considerably.
According to ITU, the penetration rate was 13% in 2008 (ITU 2009a), and around 20% end of 2009,which means that the market is still untapped and with a lot of potential. Rwanda is now catching up with other markets in East Africa using different methods. In 2007, the government reclaimed the company Rwandatel from Terracom for a payment of just US$25 million stating that “Terracom had not honored network deployment contracts” and sold it off for US$100 million to the Libyan company LAP Green just a few months later (Cellular-news 2007). continue reading »
East Africa’s most prosperous economy is not surprisingly the regions mobile technology cluster. Kenya with its capital Nairobi, has a vibrant ICT community with a number of top-class, innovative technology firms and research and development facilities. With the deregulation of the telecommunications sector,Kenya moved beyond a duopoly consisting of Safaricom and Kencell (today Zain Kenya…tomorrow Bharti) at the end of 2008 when Orange Kenya and Yu launched services as the third and fourth players. Combined, the total subscriber base is over 18,5 million users (CCK 2009) out of a population of about 40 million (UN 2009).
The deregulation, together with the introduction of a single license for ICT service providers, have in many ways leveled the playing field for other service providers and lead to increased competition. In this streamlined licensing framework, a holder of a single license can offer many different services without additional licenses. Also, during 2009, the telecommunication regulator in Kenya “established policy guidelines on infrastructure sharing in an effort to ease the investment burden of new entrants into the market and avoid duplication of resources” (CCK 2009). As a result, Zain Kenya and Yu agreed to share infrastructure. continue reading »
UN’s International Telecommunication Union, ITU, estimated that there were 4.6 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally by the end of 2009 (ITU 2009b), two-thirds of them in the developing world. A quarter of a billion mobile subscribers can be found on the African continent and the number is constantly increasing as it is the region with the highest annual growth rate in mobile subscribers (ITU 2009a). continue reading »
Safaricom is initiating a process for welcoming and working with vendors and Premium Rate Service Providers to drive innovation. They have set up a Central Team that will evaluate each submission received to establish the extent of its alignment to their brand values and customers’ expectations.
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Spoke too soon, the terms and condition thereon are same ol’ same ol’ they should in all honesty change this otherwise it still a lopsided deal, regardless of the roses that may pave the way
