Targets prepaid Mobile and Internet Everywhere 3G modem users
Access to unlimited daily, weekly and monthly bundles
The offer is the most affordable proposition in the data market
Nairobi, January 18, 2011: Integrated telecommunications services provider Orange has launched unlimited internet bundles for its mobile and 3G broadband customers.
The newly launched bundles will see Orange mobile customers enjoy unlimited internet for as low as Ksh 39 daily, Ksh 249 weekly and KSh 990 monthly while the Orange Internet Everywhere 3G modem customers will access unlimited internet for Ksh 990 and Ksh 2990 on a weekly and monthly basis respectively.
The new mobile unlimited internet bundles can be purchased by dialing #123# while the broadband bundles can be purchased from the Orange portal and are subject to a fair user policy.
The launch comes in the wake of Orange’s intent to increase its customer acquisition and retention by offering relevant and cost effective data services in a bid to further strengthen its position as the leading provider of data services in the country.
In a press statement issued from their offices, Telkom Kenya Chief Corporate Communication Officer Angela Nganga-Mumo said,” We are confident that with our reliable internet connectivity and now affordable bundles, we will have greatly improved the value proposition to our customers. Moreover, this fast and convenient access of data comes at a time when Kenyans are appreciating the use of ICT in the transaction of business, rather than just for social communication.”
According to the latest CCK report, the data market recorded a 14 % increase in the number of internet users to 14.3 million. This growth was accelerated by increased mobile subscriptions and the ease of accessing the service based on customer requirement and usage.
Orange Internet Everywhere 3G modems are available at all Orange shops and partner outlets countrywide and currently retail at Kshs 1790/-
The Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Project conducts public opinion surveys around the world on a broad array of subjects ranging from people’s assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world and important issues of the day.
In the latest research on mobile phone usage globally carried out earlier this year and released yesterday both mobile texting and social networking were found to be popular worldwide. However, of more interest to me were the findings for Kenya where just over 1000 respondents were interviewed face to face nationwide. Here are the results:
Cell Phone Usage
74% own a cell phone.
98% make phone calls.
75% send text messages.
50% take pictures or video.
23% use the Internet.
Social Networking
19% use social media regularly.
7% do not use social media.
72% do not have access to the Internet.
Usage of Social Networking by Age
18 to 29 years: 25%
30 to 49 years: 15%
50+ years: 6%
Oldest to youngest gap -19 years
You can also download the full report from the Pew Research Center web site here>
Earlier this afternoon I attended VirtualCity’s launch of HewaniLife which is arguably Kenya’s first “local” mobile apps store and features over 400 mobile apps for download. HewaniLife has both local and international mobile apps for Android, Windows, Symbian, J2ME and BlackBerry. One can also download mobile apps from HewaniLife using not just the Internet but also via SMS and USSD.
The launch of HewaniLife also served as a platform for VirtualCity to showcase a good number of in-house developed apps for several vertical segment services in Distribution, Health, Education, Transport, Retail and Utilities being offered to the business community in Kenya. HewaniLife is unique in that it brings together various players in the mobile applications space and creates synergies for economic empowerment & development.
Last week on Friday in Nairobi, plans to launch three new smartphones based on the BlackBerry 7 Operating System (OS) were announced. RIM, in conjunction with carriers and distribution partners in Kenya, is rolling out the new BlackBerry® Curve™ 9360, BlackBerry® Torch™ 9810 and BlackBerry® Torch™ 9860 smartphones, all running the powerful new BlackBerry® 7 OS.
The BlackBerry Curve 9360 is slim, stylish and simply beautiful. It is ergonomically designed with a comfortable and iconic keyboard for fast, accurate typing and an optical trackpad for easy, one-handed navigation. GPS and Wi-Fi® support are also included, as well as a 5MP camera with flash and video recording so that memories can be captured and instantly shared on social networks. The microSD/SDHC slot supports up to 32 GB memory cards for additional media storage.
The BlackBerry Torch 9810 is a powerful evolution of the original BlackBerry Torch 9800 model. The new model is faster and more fluid with high performance hardware features and the new BlackBerry 7 OS delivering an enhanced multimedia experience. Featuring a large 3.2”, high resolution touch display and a distinctive BlackBerry keyboard that easily slides out to allow fast typing; the BlackBerry Torch 9810 truly delivers the best of both worlds.
The BlackBerry Torch 9860 smartphone offers fast and fluid performance in a stylish new all-touch design. With a spectacular new 3.7” display, the largest ever on a BlackBerry smartphone, the new all-touch BlackBerry Torch 9860 is optimized for high-quality multimedia, web browsing and gaming. In addition, the BlackBerry Torch 9860 delivers the industry-leading real-time communications and collaboration experience that is loved by millions of BlackBerry smartphone users around the world.
The new BlackBerry 7 operating system introduces the next generation BlackBerry browser, featuring a significantly faster, more fluid web browsing experience that is among the best in the industry. Combining the dramatically improved performance of the advanced WebKit browser engine together with powerful hardware enhancements, BlackBerry 7 based smartphones deliver browsing results that are up to 40% faster than BlackBerry® 6 based smartphones and up to 100% faster than BlackBerry® 5 based smartphones*. Additional enhancements to this next generation BlackBerry browser include optimized zooming and panning for smoother web navigation and optimized HTML5 performance for incredible gaming and video experiences.
Waldi Wepener, Regional Director at RIM said, “The BlackBerry solution offers a best-in-class mobile communications experience with enhanced browsing and richer multimedia on a new, performance-driven platform powered by the latest BlackBerry software. We believe that the customers in Kenya will be thrilled by these powerful new BlackBerry smartphones.”
Mr Waldi Wepener, RIM Regional Director East, West and Central Africa and Mr. Rui Brites Director Africa Product Management
It was back in May 2011 that I did a blog post here about the launch of PesaPi which is an open source API for Safaricom’s M-Pesa that integrates to the web. Since then, PesaPi has become increasingly popular and my favorite geek Mike Pedersen who is behind PesaPi has been busy coding away to come up with all sorts of new enhancements. Earlier today at BarCamp Nairobi, Mike unveiled the latest edition of PesaPi which now has the following key upgrades:
Multiple Payment Systems – when launched in May 2011, PesaPi only supported Safaricom’s M-Pesa mobile money service. Now, PesaPi supports integration with other mobile money services such as Airtel Money, Orange Money and YU Cash, in and beyond Kenya.
Personal M-Pesa Accounts – when initially launched, PesaPi only supported payments going to M-Pesa business accounts where one had to register for a Paybill number with Safaricom. In the latest iteration of PesaPi, one can now use personal M-Pesa accounts to receive payments and not just business accounts. This is key since securing an M-Pesa business account can take many months and is NOT a straightforward process. In order to use a personal M-Pesa account with PesaPi, one must have a phone that runs Google’s Android with M-Pesa. At the same time, the phone needs to have SMSSync installed which is a utility that “forwards” incoming SMS messages to a computer using a data connection. This way, you can then carry around your Android phone as you normally would and whenever an M-Pesa payment notification from Safaricom comes in it can then be passed onto your website.
Faster Deployment – As illustrated in the YouTube video below, Mike has managed to streamline the process of integrating PesaPi into an existing web site in not more than 16 minutes from scratch!
The latest version of PesaPi can be downloaded here:
Its been sometime since I did a decent blog post so I’m pretty happy to finally post something that is reasonably new (i.e. meaning a couple of weeks late!). As anyone will tell you who knows me, I am super passionate about mobile as a marketing and service delivery channel. More specifically, I am talking about the mobile web and more recently mobile apps as they proliferate the mobile world, as we know it. Its one of the reasons why I was so attracted to joining Dealfish from day one, now over a year ago (which actually seems to feel like such a short time since I have been so very busy building the business in East Africa).
Dealfish was designed at launch to work on both feature (basic) mobile phones as well as smartphones across Africa. This was, and, is still quite prescient as a good number of web sites in Africa are yet to be mobile enabled. However, this trend is slowly changing as some African countries have statistics that show over 50% of their mobile subscribers go online via the mobile web, almost exclusively. Therefore, from this perspective, it was only a matter of time before we took a step further at Dealfish and developed a mobile app to keep the pace with the emerging “MobileFirst” trend that is engulfing the dark continent (aka Africa).
A couple of week ago, Dealfish quietly launched its very first mobile app on Google’s Android Market. The Dealfish Android mobile app was developed over several months and I am quite pleased to say it works pretty well. This is our first stab at deploying a mobile app and as such its still very much a work-in-progress. I am particularly proud that most of the work done in building the app was actually done right here in Nairobi which goes to show the depth and breadth of mobile application developers we have in East Africa. In addition, we are already working on version 1.1 of the Dealfish Android App.
An example of a search results page on the Dealfish Android mobile app.
The way the Dealfish Android mobile app has been designed to work is so that you have access to most of the features and functionality that you currently get on both our PC and mobile web sites. However, the experience goes a step further in making access to content and services on Dealfish faster and more user-friendly for the Android user. In addition, there are additional features we are going to introduce in the next release but unfortunately I cannot go into specifics here, at least not just yet. However, I have tested it on Huawei’s entry-level IDEOS, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7, Galaxy Mini and Galaxy s2 devices – in all cases, it works flawlessly.
At launch, the Dealfish Android mobile app is only available for listings on our Kenya and Nigeria web sites. We plan to expand these listings to include our other countries in due course. We would love to hear your comments on it. You can download the Dealfish Android mobile app here>
Multichoice Kenya is to launch DSTV Mobile’s “Drifta” tomorrow (Wednesday) morning for the first time in Kenya. The Drifta is a mobile TV decoder that receives DVB-H signals and converts them into a Wi-Fi signal for Wi-Fi enabled viewing devices such as laptops, PCs, tablets and smartphones. DSTV mobile has been operational in Kenya for sometime but this is the first time that the Drifta offering has been made available in East Africa.
In order to use the Drifta, one currently can access it on Apple’s iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad running iOS 4.0 and higher iOS as well as Windows PCs including laptops and notebooks running Windows XP, Vista and 7. Other devices will be available soon. The really big deal about the Drifta is one can access a good number of DSTV channels without having to acquire the full DSTV satellite-based service. In addition, the Drifta is mobile meaning you use it on the go without being stuck in the house.
You can find out more about DSTV Mobile services currently available in Kenya here. In addition, you can find out more about the Drifta from the DSTV mobile web site in South Africa here.
It seems that this has been one of those weeks when there is certainly lots happening within Kenya’s technology scene so I have blogged on practically a daily basis. The latest big development which I found out about yesterday is that a start-up mobile gaming business called Planet Rackus has launched a mobile game aptly called “Ma3Racer“.
In Kenyan parlance, a “Ma3″ is slang for a “Matatu”. Matatus are the regularly seen, noisy and usually badly driven public service vans seen all over the Kenya. For many Kenyans, a Ma3 or Matatu is their main means of transport to school, to work, and is generally their only way of getting around over short and long distances. One could say that Matatus are indeed a necessary evil that is essential for the public transport system to work in Kenya (we all know how public transport breaks down when Matatus go on strike from time to time!).
Ma3Racer’s game play has you as the player being a “dere” (driver in Kenyan slang) in a Matatu avoiding traffic obstacles by toggling left and right on a busy Nairobi highway whilst trying to collect as many “money bags” as possible. This adds an interesting twist as to you have to quickly differentiate between traffic obstacles and money bags which ultimately determines how far you can go in the game. Ma3Racer gets faster and faster at different game levels and requires ever quicker reflexes to dodge on-coming obstacles whilst picking as many money bags as possible.
Ma3Racer’s gaming simplicity is exactly the reason why casual mobile games such as Rovio’s Angry Birds has been so stupendously successful globally on a myriad of mobile platforms. Everyone “gets it” almost immediately and there is no age limit as to who can play it – thereby making it instantly appealing to anyone and everyone who tries it out. Angry Birds has been consistently one of the top downloads on Apple’s App Store, Google Android Market and lately Nokia’s OVI Store for a good reason – its easy to play, its fun, and well, basically, it works!
From what I can tell, Ma3Racer is possibly the first Kenyan mobile game that is being launched with a serious plan to reach the masses. The team behind the game have been developing it for sometime now and they knew that they had to come up with something unique and yet contextually relevant for Kenyan users. Ma3Racer was launched this week on Nokia’s OVI Store and it works on entry-level Nokia mobile handsets that run Symbian 40 as well as Symbian 60. The main reason that Ma3Racer has been launched on Symbian is that its the mobile operating system with the largest uptake of users in Kenya, giving Ma3Racer the highest potential for success. In my opinion, this is a smart move by Planet Rackus to “fish where the fish are”.
I had a chance to catch up with Joe Njeru who is one of the team members at Planet Rackus on their motivations behind building Ma3Racer and this is what he had to share with me:
MK: Why you did you and the team at Planet Rackus build Ma3Racer?
JN: We got tired of playing games of stories we could not relate to. We’ve got a rich African culture that we can draw on to create our own stories. We leveraged on our experience in digital media and pulled together
various talents and skill sets (writers, art directors, 3D artists, programmers, web developers, designers, flash animators, illustrators & music & video producers).
MK: Why should people download Ma3Racer instead of other mobile games that are out there?
JN: The game is cool, relevant and you can compete against your friends via our high scores table on our website (http://www.ma3racer.com). Plus its FREE!! The game is for everyone. You can play it while you are stuck in Nairobi’s infamous traffic, possibly even in a Ma3! You can watch the game trailer on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ2ndlpTdqE) to see how easy it is to play. This game is the first of many to come.
MK: In a nutshell, what is the “plot” behind the Ma3Racer game?
JN: Ma3Racer is based on Kenya’s most popular and chaotic mode of public transport, Matatus. Ma3Racer allows players a chance to get behind the wheel and navigate their way around the busy streets of Nairobi.
But things are not as easy as they seem – players have to be extra careful to avoid ramming into a variety of obstacles that randomly appear all whilst trying to beat the clock to get their passengers to their destination safe and sound.
MK: You have said that Ma3Racer is free to download from Nokia’s OVI Store, therefore, how do you plan to monetize the game as you have costs involved to make it?
JN: We plan to make money on the game by selling Ma3Racer branded merchandise such as wallpapers, apparel, and eventually advertising within the game. We are also exploring other avenues to generate income to sustain this initiative.
In concluding, I’m pretty excited to see how well Ma3Racer will perform in the coming months. You can download Ma3Racer from the Nokia OVI Store as below:
Finally, check out the cool Ma3Racer trailer on YouTube below:
I just finished reading a CNN article about the launch of Facebook’s Mobile Messenger App. For some reason, this new development from the world’s largest social network of 700 million users struck me as super significant. At this time, Facebook Messenger is only available as an iPhone and Android mobile app in a certain markets – it seems I cannot download it yet on Apple’s App Store in Kenya. However, you have to consider that once its available globally, and on multiple mobile operating systems and platforms, how big could it possibly become?
The truth of the matter is that most mobile networks globally make a significant volume of their revenues via SMS messaging. It’s a major part of their business and one that they have prospered on for many many years. However, courtesy of smartphones and the growing range of innovative mobile messaging apps, this revenue line is now under attack. I recently got a BlackBerry and have only started using BB Messenger. I have to say its excellent and I keep signing up more and more friends. It works and its free but unfortunately only works on BlackBerry.
In addition to the launch of Facebook Messenger, other mobile messaging apps of note are the soon to be launched Apple iMessenger in the next upgrade of iOS as well as WhatsApp Messenger which is really taking off as a multi-platform mobile messaging app. Not to be left behind, Samsung also recently announced that they plan to launch a mobile messaging service that will work across all their mobile devices in a ubiquitous manner.
Going forward, the most significant thing about Facebook Messenger is Facebook’s huge user base on a global scale. Facebook Messenger has the potential to reinvent mobile messaging and communications as we know it. Take Kenya for instance – there are over 1 million Facebook users. This in itself is as large as a small mobile network’s subscriber base, and its only getting bigger by the day. Facebook Messenger essentially makes Facebook a quasi-mobile network operator for free messaging.
This could indeed be a significant moment in telecoms history – the day that Facebook moved from being a social network to the “de facto” global mobile communications platform – it’s certainly conceivable that this could happen. One just has to look at how successful Google’s Android has been in the smartphone space to realize that technology innovation reinvents everything and that today’s enabler could be tomorrow’s disruptor.
Yesterday I was at the iHub in Nairobi for Nokia’s launch of its local version of the “Create for Millions” mobile apps contest. The contest has both a local and global versions that aim to bring consumers and developers together to create applications for Nokia’s Series 40 mobile phones.
In light of the hyper-growth and interest surrounding smartphones globally, it’s very easy to forget that the majority of mobile subscribers in emerging markets such as Kenya cannot afford them. It’s for this very reason that entry-level phones such as Nokia’s Series 40 handsets continue to lead the market in terms of uptake and general internet usage as per statistics. Therefore, this is still a very large market for mobile apps, even as smartphones become more widely adopted.
The best thing about the local version of Create for Millions is that three winners will be chosen by a select panel of judges and they will be flown to London on an all expense-paid trip to attend Nokia World which will be held in October 26-27, 2011. Nokia has invited me to be one of the judges on this local panel so this is something I am really looking forward to.
The last day for entries in the local Create for Millions competition is the 2nd of September 2011 so there is not that much time left. One thing that left me thinking that Kenya could really win the global event is that VirtualCity did this last year and pocketed a cool US$ 1 million in Nokia’s Calling All Innovators mobile apps contest. It’s very possible!
So, if your that budding mobile application developer or a tech firm that has the chops to enter, good luck and give it a go by registering online at www.developer.nokia.com/create4millions/
You can watch the game trailer on YouTube at 
