Monthly Archive for May, 2011

Press Release

Nairobi, Kenya, 17 May, 2011

Huawei's Grace Kamau demonstrates the IDEOS tablet to the chairman of the parliamentary committee on Information James Rege. Looking on is Huawei CEO, Mr. Herman He.

Huawei, a leader in providing innovative telecommunication solutions for operators around the world has today announced that the Huawei IDEOS is the most popular smart phone in Kenya for the first quarter of 2011.

This is according to a report by GFK Retail and Technology, one of the world’s leading independent market researcher tracking sales data in technical consumer goods and entertainment in over 80 countries worldwide. The IDEOS was launched during the 2010 Christmas period with the phone gaining   wide acceptance in the market.

Mr. Herman He, CEO Huawei  announced that,  “Since the IDEOS  launch five months ago, so far over 60,000 pieces have been sold and we are moving towards the 100,000 piece mark with its share of the local smartphone market  at 45% in the first quarter of the year, making it the top selling device with February alone reaching  73%.”

“We are delighted by the IDEOs’ outstanding performance and we hereby affirm our commitment to continue providing quality and affordable products to Kenyans”. Mr. He added.

Mr. He also said that Delivering connectivity for users’ thorough smart devices was  one of Huawei’s  core objectives for 2011, with the  IDEOS devices  designed to provide smart and efficient connectivity to deliver a simple and premium end user experience .

The success has partly been attributed to a strategic partnership with Safaricom as the main distributor and marketer of the smart phone, Google for their Android 2.2 platform,  and QUALCOMM for the chipsets.

Safaricom Head of Retail Morris Maina said the partnership was a major win for Kenyan consumers and presented a strategic fit for Safaricom in its quest to drive up data uptake by availing affordable internet enabled devices. The phone retails at KShs8,499, a KShs6,500 discount on its original price of KShs14,999. It also comes with free 600MB Safaricom data and Kshs1,000 worth of Safaricom airtime.

“Safaricom believes that innovations and value proposition will be key in winning consumers as the market becomes increasingly competitive. We are thus happy to be in a partnership that subscribes to  these tenets and understands that affordability  is key in a market like Kenya. The availability and increased take-up of this device opens a new world of immense possibilities to our subscribers and greatly increases the utility they can derive from our network, the only one with 3G capability in the market,” said Mr Maina.

Information and Communication Permanent Secretary Dr. Bitange Ndemo noted that the mobile phone has permeated every sphere of life in Kenya. “In the beginning of the 21st century, the mobile telephone was the reserve of an elite few and the gadget’s sole purpose was to make phone calls and send text messages. Today, all this has changed and the mobile phone is no longer a luxury but a necessity,” said Dr. Ndemo.

“By morphing and adopting into various aspects of our lives, the mobile phone has gone beyond its original purpose of phone calls and text messages and it now serves as a bank, a computer a radio and a television set among other things. In a nutshell, it has penetrated every aspect of our lives,” he added.

Press Release

A world-class line-up of international and African technologists will present at the Tech4Africa conference in October this year. The event provides Africans with a rare opportunity to learn firsthand from technology evangelists about the role that the web plays in African business and development.

The two-day conference runs from 27 to 28 October 2011 at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg and will bring international experience and perspectives to the African continent, while at the same time showcasing what Africans are doing with mobile, web, digital media and other emerging technologies.

“2010 saw the launch of Tech4Africa and we were met with overwhelming support from both the tech and business communities and our foundation partners, First National Bank and Internet Solutions,” says Gareth Knight, MD of Tech4Africa. “This year we’re delivering the same high standard of content and looking forward to bringing technologists together to look at what’s current now, with an emphasis on social media and how it’s relevant to digital marketing, mobile convergence, the growing cloud and the applications of BigData. We’re also focusing on great African technologists that really are leading the way.”

Keynote speakers include Josh Spear, one of the youngest and most respected digital marketing strategists in the world, and Herman Chinery-Hesse, commonly known as ‘The Bill Gates of Africa’. Spear is a trend spotter, blogger and brand strategist, sought out for his fresh perspective and no-holds-barred style of consulting on everything from design and gadgets to authenticity and word-of-mouth. His recent focus has been the power of the blogosphere, technology, and the impact of digital media on the world.

In addition to his internationally recognised trend-spotting blog, he is a founding partner of Undercurrent, a digital think-tank focused on exploring new ways to reach young people without interrupting them. With Africa rapidly leapfrogging the web and PC experience with a mobile one, the insights into how people and brands interact digitally is crucial, and indeed sets the stage for the foreseeable future. Spear has appeared in publications including Time Magazine, the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune and has presented for such diverse clients as McDonald’s, NBC, Pepsi, Virgin, The American Advertising Federation and The Google Zeitgeist conference.

Chinery-Hesse is a renowned Ghanaian technology entrepreneur who co-founded the million-dollar software company SOFTtribe, and then went on to launch BSL, which provides the infrastructure for entrepreneurs across Africa to sell products and receive payment through their cell phones. Chinery-Hesse is passionate about the contribution that technology can make in unlocking prosperity and wealth across Africa, and will be presenting his thesis on this.

He has won a number of awards and is also an accomplished speaker who has delivered talks at the Wharton Business School, Harvard Business School, Cambridge University, the University of Ghana, and the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania.

Spear and Chinery-Hesse are part of a line-up of African and international thought leaders from organisations like Amazon, HP, Johns Hopkins University, Mozilla, SwiftRiver, the African Institution of Technology, SimpleGeo, Motribe, Clearleft, Ultinet Systems and many more.

Knight adds, “With Tech4Africa our simple aim is to congregate the best practitioners in Africa and the world to provide inspiration, guidance, case studies, success stories and ultimately experience, so that Africans don’t need to travel the world to gain this understanding and exposure”.

Registration for the event is open and early bird tickets are available until 10th of June. For further information or to register, visit http://tech4africa.com, or to contact Tech4Africa, email hello@tech4africa.com or visit http://tech4africa.com/contact/.

About Tech4Africa

Tech4Africa runs from 27-28 October 2011 at The Forum in Bryanston, Johannesburg. The event is targeted at business professionals and technologists from businesses of all sizes, from entrepreneurs and start-up owners through to professionals working at large organisations.

Josh Spear, one of the youngest and most respected digital marketing strategists in the world, will be joined by Herman Chinery-Hesse who is commonly known as ‘The Bill Gates of Africa’, to present the keynote addresses at the Tech4Africa conference. Josh and Herman join a stellar line-up of international technologists including speakers from organisations such as Amazon, HP, Johns Hopkins University, Mozilla, SimpleGeo and Clearleft, and African technologists from SwiftRiver, the African Institution of Technology, Ultinet Systems, Motribe and many more. Early bird ticket price R3900 (R4446 incl. VAT).

Web: http://tech4africa.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/tech4africa

About Gareth Knight

Gareth is a digital maven and open source evangelist. Educated as a zoologist, he is a veteran of two dot com crashes in London, one web 2.0 acquisition, and runs Technovated. Previously, Gareth served in London as Director of Product Management for MyHeritage.com, a global family genealogy company based in Tel Aviv. Before joining MyHeritage, Gareth landed seed funding from London’s top early stage investors to co-found Kindo.com, a global family social network with an international team spread around the world. He then led the Product team in London to roll out a localised version of Kindo in 17 languages within 6 months, as well as an aggressive search engine campaign, both of which resulted in users from circa 220 countries and an enviable growth rate. Kindo was voted one of the top 3 most promising Internet companies in the UK for 2008, and was later acquired by MyHeritage in August that year.

About Tech4Africa partners

Both global and local leading companies from a variety of industries will support Tech4Africa. Delegates will have the opportunity to interact with industry leaders in the vibrant tradeshow at the conference.
Tech4Africa foundation partners include:

First National Bank (FNB): www.fnb.co.za
Internet Solutions: www.is.co.za

Press Release

Nothing beats the chirp of conversations from a battery of bloggers and journalists huddled in a room. Speaking of latest trends on issues ranging from traffic jam to emerging technology developments, it’s always tempting to listen in among groups, for fear of missing out on details of what’s the hottest tech thing in the market.

So when Dorothy Ooko, Nokia’s Head of Communications for East and Southern Africa, called the Ovi Happy Hour gathering at Sierra to order, it seemed like many were cut short. But they didn’t know that what lay in store was bound to lighten the chilly evening-significantly.

The night for the Ovi Happy Hour was aptly themed “Success Redefined” the tag-line associated with Nokia’s latest business smart phone, the E7. Seeing the E7 though the eyes of those who have already used it was an experience in itself. Hailed as the all-in-one business smartphone, the Nokia E7 is the new-age Communicator. Boasting a Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync support alongside 4-inch AMOLED touchscreen display and a slide out four-row QWERTY keyboard, the E7 hit the Kenyan market during the last week of April.

First off was Tim Njiru, making an interesting pitch of the Nokia E7′s 8-megapixel camera. Tim wowed the crowd with clear, if cheeky photos he’d a couple of kids “in my rounds.” And he’d more serious photos, this time from a South Africa Airways plane before take-off. Here he had exploited the full-screen 16:9 viewfinder with its easy-to-use touch screen parameters pretty well.

Tim Njiru speaking of his favourite apps on the Nokia E7

Clearly in love with the apps and the Nokia maps, Tim did not hide his inclination for WhatsApp, cross-platform mobile messaging app which allows you to exchange messages without having to pay for SMS and a messenger too. Next was Gravity, a full-featured Twitter Client with a gorgeous, highly praised user interface. Tim made good of his five-minute pitch to talk about how Gravity supports multiple Twitter accounts, image-uploading TwitPic and TwitGoo, multiple Twitter-searches.

Running short of time, Tim spoke of the Nokia Maps, explaining how useful the maps can get especially to strangers in new places. And in keeping with the week’s happenings, Tim even had a screen-grab he took the previous evening from the cable-news channel CNN as Michael Holmes captured events leading to the Royal Wedding. What a close to make.

Moses Kemibaro speaking of his E7 experience

Moses Kemibaro, a renowned IT consultant and blogger took to the floor next and called the E7 “a fantastic work-horse phone for business people.” Picking out the phones capabilities-to integrate office with social media tools, Kemibaro said the fact that the phone had a combination of touch-screen and QWERTY keyboard made it a cool thing to have for everyone. Not to be outdone, Dorothy Ooko stepped forward and spoke of the of Nokia’s keenness in making user-friendly devices. Dorothy was fast to speak of her affinity to the N8 but she added that the E7 had that added advantage of the flip which would help enhance ease of use especially for business people.

Perhaps presenting one of most core benefits of the E7 on this afternoon, Dorothy demonstrated to an eager crowd in the room, how easy it is to draft and edit documents from the E7 even sending a dud document to her boss from the phone. She went further to show how to use the Microsoft Communicator on the phone. Gripping stuff.

Kenneth Oyolla of Nokia East Africa talks up the Nokia E7

In the process of updating the crowd on whether he’d ‘received’ the demo document from Dorothy a few minute before, Ken Oyolla, Nokia’s General Manager for East and Southern Africa got into the team of presenters on the evening. But he spoke of the E7′s entertainment front, a relevant element for any business person who travels often. So Ken took time to speak of travel apps such as the World Traveler, which he said was “a must have free and premium services for travelers.”

“The app has an amazing in-built virtual ‘flight assistant’, which many will find handy for searching flight schedules of major and low cost airlines as well as real-time alerts regarding delays, cancellations and gate changes,” said Oyolla. He captured the need of the app well, especially for travellers who inevitably get confused about the time difference while abroad. Ken spoke of how useful World Traveller is on info regarding weather, currencies.

It’s unbelievable that such qualities would be wrapped in a single device,
the Nokia E7. Listening all round, it appeared there are a few other things would so suitably redefine success. No wonder, then, that everyone wanted to stick around for a word or two with the Nokia team, or have a beer to go with the fun at the event.