The unreal growth of mobile data
Mobile data usage has finally begun to reach the usage levels that experts have been predicting for a while. There are various factors that have helped data usage to climb in almost all territories around the world; we all know about the effect Apple’s iPhone has had, but now there is also Google’s Android OS* that is boosting usage. AdMob Mobile Metrics reports an increase of 97% in requests from Android devices over the last two months of 2009 in the US and with many new Android devices being launched in Europe, Africa and Asia that surely is only the beginning.
Android excitement aside, the iPhone is still the leading manufacturer in terms of requests to AdMob’s sites in Latin America, Western Europe, Oceania and North America –showing that you don’t have to be first to market, just put out the best quality and users will come.
In Africa usage is being driven both by the number of mobile web enabled phones on the market as well as by all the new mobisites that are being launched every day. Because the iPhone and other Android phones are only really available in South Africa they don’t appear too prominently in the AdMob and Opera Mini reports for Africa as yet, but they are starting to show their respective heads. Nokia is still by far the biggest handset manufacturer in Africa with over 50% of all requests to AdMob sites coming through Nokia handsets, but worldwide Nokia recently slipped below the 40% mark to around 36% market share. Almost all of the low cost (or feature phones) Nokia launches these days are mobile web enabled thus driving mobile web usage.
As mentioned, the growth in mobile web usage is not only driven by the phones, but also by the mobisites that are now available. A case in point is Facebook, who have just announced Facebook Zero, which is a stripped down version of the hugely popular social networking site that is aimed directly at emerging or developing markets. The new version is much quicker to load and is much less bandwidth intensive which makes it much easier and less costly for feature phones (still using GPRS) to access the site.
* Android is a mobile phone OS (Operating System) developed by Google that can be used by any handset manufacturer with no licensing costs. The idea was to get the platform on as many phones as possible in order to drive Google’s presence in mobile. With the launch of the Android App Store and the Nexus One (Google’s own handset) Google is really trying to take on Apple, and so far, have been doing really well. We expect to see great things from Android in the future.
Pod1
Pod1 and Fontera have agreed a Joint Venture to set up Pod1’s Cape Town office. Pod1 is a very successful ecommerce web design company with offices in New York and London that counts Kurt Geiger, Jigsaw, Uniqlo and William Rast as clients. The aim of the JV is to set up a development team for Pod1 in a new territory. The two companies were brought together due to the high quality of work that is produced by both and we look forward to a long and successful relationship.
www.pod1.com
Bookmark Awards
The Shuttleworth Foundation and Fontera were awarded a bronze medal for the Kontax m-novel mobisite at the recently held Bookmark awards. Fontera was nominated in a number of categories and won the Mobile Publishing award together with The Shuttleworth Foundation and Clockwork Zoo for the work done on the groundbreaking m-novel. The Bookmarks celebrate digital media in all its guises, and is coordinated by the Online Publishers Association (OPA) as a means to promote digital media in South Africa, and establish it as a standard part of the marketing mix.
kontax.mobi
Mobile Stores and selling music online
With the iTunes store selling over 6 Billion music downloads and on track to deliver more than 25% of the world’s music sales by 2012. Digital music sales are finally becoming mainstream. The iTunes Store originally sold digital music for iPods, but became a mobile download service when the iPhone was launched in 2007. It now sells movies, TV series, music videos and mobile applications in addition to music.
While there is no iTunes store in Africa yet there are other serious players including Nokia and the cellular networks that are getting in the game early. Nokia launched their music store this year and some cellular networks have been selling music and other mobile content for a while now. Media companies such as the SABC and Primedia have also got in on the act so users in South Africa now have a choice as to where to shop from their phones.
There are far more mobile web users in Africa than there are traditional web users and the gap will get wider as more people discover what is actually available to them when accessing the mobile web. Additionally, the majority of mobile users in Africa do not have an alternative digital device to listen to music with. The mobile phone is not only their browsing tool, but also their Walkman for lack of a better term.
What all this means is that more and more people will be doing their digital shopping using their phones. In the future not only will users be looking to purchase music and applications, but also prepaid airtime, electricity and other essentials. As data rates drop and bandwidth increases, almost anything that is virtual will be able to be paid for and delivered via the mobile web.
The question for you is: Are you making plans to take your offering mobile yet or are you waiting for others to get there first?
Kontax/M4Lit
In September Kontax – an m-novel created for the Shuttleworth Foundation’s m4Lit project– launched in South Africa, making world history as the first of its kind to be offered in both English and isiXhosa. The m4Lit project, led by Steve Vosloo, 21st Century Learning Fellow for the Shuttleworth Foundation, and developed by Fontera, aimed to not only explore the potential for increased reading and writing for 21st century teens through mobile phones, but also to introduce a more interactive style of story writing and publishing that holds appeal to the participatory culture of youth.
The hope behind the m4Lit project is that by researching the role of cellphones in teen reading and writing, educationalists and publishers can better understand the opportunities and risk for literacy practices presented by the most popular communication device used by any teen today.
Zingle
Zingle, an SMS based restaurant ordering system, launched their version of Fontera’s CampaignTXT mobile campaign manager this month in Southern California. The system allows customers to SMS their order to their favourite restaurant instead of phoning it in. Zingle’s CampaignTXT system also builds a database of customers for each store that can then be used to send marketing messages to. Fontera integrated the BulkTXT messaging system into Zingle so restaurant owners only need to access a single system to set up campaigns and send outgoing messages.
Are apps the way to go?
One of the more interesting, and less hyped, developments in mobile over the past year or two has definitely been the emergence of the application. Applications or (Apps) are downloadable widgets that are made by third party developers to be used on major platforms such as the iPhone, the G-Phone (Google’s Android OS) and Nokia’s Symbian OS. While the iTunes store is far and away the biggest purveyor of apps worldwide, almost everyone is opening or planning to open their own app store.
Apps range from really useful (think MXiT) to really clever (think Wooden Spoon), to really fun (think all of your old Atari games) to really silly (think the Fart App) with some being free to download and others costing up to $50 on iTunes. But with Apple selling over 1,5 billion apps in a year it is clear to see that they are here to stay. Apps are also developed for other platforms, such as Facebook. Their launch of the Facebook Platform in 2007 made the difference and pushed the user numbers on Facebook past their biggest rival, Myspace.
While the iPhone is really big in the US and Europe, it is yet to really make a dent in developing nations. Nokia is still the biggest in the world outside of the US (especially in developing countries) and both Nokia platforms (the Symbian and the old series 40 phones) already have the ability to download Java based apps. Most other handset manufacturers (aside from Apple) use the same Java based platform which makes is easy to develop one app and then adapt it slightly to work on thousands of handsets.
While most of the original apps were developed by established software companies and home based developers, including hackers and kids in their bedrooms, many branded apps are now being released by companies around the world. What better way to get your brand out there than to have your own, branded app downloaded and living on a user’s phone? Some branded apps are fun and interesting, others can be really useful – like a pocket info system sent to you for free by your airline to be used while you’re on holiday. Apps are only starting out now, but the broad range of what is already available is mind blowing. With all the app stores popping up around the world, it may be time to start thinking about what your app will do.
For those that don’t know:
MXiT is an Instant Messaging application that lets users send SMS’s to each other for about 2c a time.
Wooden Spoon is a restaurant review app that also makes recommendations using the accelerometer in the iPhone. You shake the phone and it randomly selects a restaurant for you to visit.
The Fart app makes the noise of a selection of different types of farts.
SABC's mobile strategy proves to be a winner
Following on from our main topic in the last Fontera WrAP, SABC1’s mobisite, mzansifosho.mobi became the third most popular site in SA in its first month. Mzansifosho.mobi came in behind Soccer Laduma (soccerladuma.mobi, also a Fontera developed site) and Vodafone Live in terms of pageviews for the month of July. It was also the highest monetised mobile site in SA according to AdMob, the mobile advertising network. As part of Fontera’s agreement with the SABC covering mobisites, SABC News, Ukhozi FM and Lotus FM all launched in the last week. There are currently 5 SABC mobisites live with others set to be launched on a regular basis over the next few months.
The performance of sites such as Soccer Laduma and SABC 1 shows that people are tech savvy and will visit and browse sites if given the ability to do it effortlessly. By giving people who do not have Internet access the ability to access sites and other info via their phones you are able to open up your brand to a huge group of existing or potential customers. Mobile web is the way to go.
The Essence of Beauty
Gabrielle Rosario from Storyboard Marketing was contracted by Clicks to launch their new range of Essence beauty products, which is aimed at the teen market. Fontera developed an interactive mobisite and application for the brand. The mobisite was marketed on MXiT, Facebook and various other platforms targeted at teen girls.
The Essence mobisite allowed users to select an avatar to which they could apply different types of make-up, and then send it along with a message to their friends. The unique avatar could then be used as a wallpaper.
Users were also prompted to enter the last four digits of the product barcode to enter a competition to win cash prizes
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