Monthly Archive for October, 2010
AccessKenya has expanded its wireless Internet network to Nyeri and Nanyuki in Kenya. This expansion will see Nyeri and Nanyuki as well as areas such as Mukurweini covered by AccessKenya’s WIMAX Internet service.
Commenting on this milestone, AccessKenya’s Managing Dircetor Jonathan Somen said “our entry into these towns is clear testimony of our commitment to making our impressive range of services more easily accessible to a wider client range. There has been numerous requests for our services in these areas hence our roll out to cater for the increasing demand from existing clients and the potential the company has identified in the region to attract new clients”.
“AccessKenya clients in these regions will also benefit from other services including layer 2 and layer 3 VPNs, inter-branch connectivity, MPLS and other value added services using AccessKenya’s backbone.” said Somen, adding that AccessKenya had also dedicated more than 150 Megabytes of bandwidth for these new locations. Recently, AccessKenya also expanded it’s Internet service to Nakuru, Eldoret and Kisumu as well to cater for those markets.
This is a video I took on Wednesday the 20th October 2010 which was Shujaa Day (formerly Kenyatta Day) in Kenya at the iHub, Nairobi. Reflections with Safaricom’s Michael Joseph (MJ) was a 1 to 2 hour long session whereby a select group of invitees got a chance to ask Michael Joseph questions on his wildly successful and “peculiar” decade at the helm of Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile network. The video has breaks here and there but its more or less everything he spoke about. I hope you enjoy hearing MJ’s words of wisdom as much as I did.
Reflections with Safaricom’s (former) “Rockstar” CEO, Michael Joseph: The Video from Moses Kemibaro on Vimeo.
Nokia will be holding an Application Developers BootCamp in Nairobi next week at SCI Lab of the University of Nairobi Chiromo Campus (Off Riverside Drive). The Bootcamp will comprise of Java training on the 26th and 27th October 2010 and Qt mobile training on the 28th and 29th October 2010. For more details visit http://events.forum.nokia.com/invitation/trainingnairobi
Yesterday at the monthly MobileMonday meeting in Nairobi at the iHub, Samsung made its ambitions to drive local mobile applications development in Kenya known. More specifically, Samsung is keen to grow the uptake of its Bada-powered handsets in Kenya via locally developed and contextually relevant mobile applications.
Samsung Mobile Goodies!
Bada (which means ocean in Korean) is Samsung’s proprietary smartphone platform that was unveiled earlier this year and to-date has one mobile handset in the form of the Samsung Wave which was launched in Kenya a couple of months ago. The Wave, which is an impressive smartphone featuring a diverse range of novel features has already sold over 3 million units globally since its launch and is available in Kenya for Kes. 29,000.00.
Although the Wave is currently Samsung’s only Bada-powered handset, plans are underway to have 6 handsets on Bada by early 2011 including a model that will retail for below Kes. 10,000.00. In order to drive the adoption of its Bada handsets, Samsung plans to tap into Kenya’s mobile application developer community to develop local mobile applications and content.
This process has already begun since Verviant, a local web development firm was engaged by Samsung to develop 2 local applications for Kenya. The two applications are Sasa, a mobile news application that features content from the popular Kenyan radio station Capital FM and Mpango, a mobile events application that is also location aware.
In order to spur Kenyan mobile application developers to start building on Bada, Samsung also announced a mobile applications competition whereby the top five application developers will be awarded Kes. 200,000.00 each for their efforts. In addition, the mobile applications would be made available on Samsung’s mobile apps store, globally. Samsung will not take any of the revenue made on downloads as these would be shared between the developer and the mobile network operator(s).
In concluding, it would seem that Samsang, through its Bada initiative, is taking what seems to be a counter-intuitive step in the face of better established and fast growing mobile platforms such as Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android and Nokia’s Symbian. However, as we all know, there is always room for innovation that could change the tide and Bada could be just that. Whatever the case, Samsung also has handsets on Android, Symbian and soon Windows Mobile 7 so they are hedging their bets nevertheless.
NOTE: You can view pictures I took at MobileMonday Kenya yesterday here>
This is an article on cloud computing in Kenya that was featured in today’s Smart Company Magazine in the Daily Nation in which I was quoted. You can read it here>
Below is a short video clip of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Android Tablet as seen during this month’s MobileMonday meeting at the iHub yesterday evening. Its a lot smaller than Apple’s iPad but the screen quality is excellent and I just can’t wait to get my hands on one of these Tabs!
Below is an interview I had with Samsung Kenya’s Robert Ngeru on their Bada mobile operating system and their plans for local mobile applications in Kenya during this month’s MobileMonday meeting at the iHub. The interview was after Samsung made some significant announcements at MobileMonday this week which I will be blogging about in a later post.
Late last week the Apple’s iPhone 4 finally found its way to Kenya via Orange. The launch of the iPhone 4 was made via a press conference as well as large full page ads in the major dailies. However, as far as I know, no pricing or packages we’re announced at the same time which led me to try to find out more.
The Apple iPhone 4 as seen at Orange Kenya's Sarit Centre Shop, Nairobi, Kenya
I called customer service at Orange Kenya’s on friday only to be told that I needed to go to one of the Orange shops to get this information (seriously?! well, yes, I actually did this morning at the Sarit Centre branch). As it turned out, they did actually have the iPhone 4 in stock although there was only one unit as per picture. There we’re no brochures yet but I did get the following pricing and package information from their very helpful customer service staff on-site:
- Apple iPhone 4 16GB: Kes. 30,499.00
- Apple iPhone 4 32GB: Kes. 39,999.00
- 24 Month Package/Contract (Postpaid only): Kes. 5,000.00 one-time deposit and Kes, 5,000.00 monthly which includes with 9 hours of talk time, 300 SMS and 300MB of data (the cost of voice is Kes. 2.00 on-net and Kes. 4.00 off-net. SMS is billed at Kes. 1.00 on-net and Kes. 2.00 off-net. Data is billed at Kes. 7.00 per MB)
- The contract duration for the iPhone 4 is 24 months, if a customer exits before the end of the contract, the customer will be required to pay the total cost of the device and the service fees for the remaining contract duration
So, there you have it. The prices look high on the monthly bundle rate (i.e Kes. 5,000.00 which is the same for the iPhone 3G and 3GS models with Orange Kenya) but the purchasing price of Kes. 30,499.00 for the 16GB model is not bad considering you will have the very latest and only several months old Apple iPhone 4! I recently started using an iPhone 3GS and lets just say its been a revelation for me so I am really really eager to get my hands on an upgrade in the form of an iPhone 4. For more detailed information and all the features of the iPhone 4, go to the web site here>