Post date: Jun 03, 2011 11:32:12 AM
South Africa developers and digital marketers see Africa as big market for application based mobile phone technologies where they can help farmers, miners and entrepreneurs do business in a new way.
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA (JUNE 2, 2011) REUTERS - Mobile applications otherwise known as apps
are being seen as the next step in efforts to making life easier for a wider population, according to leading phone manufacturers who met in South Africa this week.
Appsworld Africa 2011, held on Thursday (June 02) in Cape Town, was a platform for the world's leading mobile phone and computer developers to show off their latest inventions.
On a continent where a computer is beyond the reach of most people, mobile phones in Africa have seen explosive growth with over a third of the population having access.Among designs competing for top app spot for users in developing nations was an app for monitoring cattle, an app for mining gold and an app for grassroots campaigning.
"Africa is the biggest market for mobile phones. Applications is a new way of being able to do things more effectively on the continent. An application can be developed for farmers who are farming cotton, mining gold, small scale farmers, small scale miners so there's so many things that can be done here to generate revenue for small scale villages or whatever just from a simple app (application) because everybody uses their mobile phone, even people in the villages, farming and whatever," said Taona Karonga a delegate from Zimbabwe.
In between stands stacked with the latest touch screen gadgets delegates could be seen tapping away on tablet computers and mobile phones, testing out yet to be released apps straight from the design room floors.
According to the head of Google's South Africa mobile division Brett Sinclair, Africa is one the key battlegrounds for the world's leading phone and computer software providers.
"If we look at Africa, it's the leading nation or leading continent generating mobile web content and the natural evolution for mobile web is of course applications, that's purely because of the cheap smart phones coming into Africa. One of the key hot spots in Africa is Kenya, Kenya is a vibe, every time I go up there, I meet incredibly talented people and their whole focus is around mobile entrepreneurism so when we have big international shows like this in Africa, it really helps give them the exposure that's required," he said.
Evans Giliana, from Nokia said it made a refreshing change to see Africa put at the top of the global agenda when it comes to new business potential.
"Obviously you know, with technology, Africa has always primarily been seen as a country that cannot produce something out of this world but in recent years we've seen the growth of the OVI store (Nokia shops for downloading digital music and apps) and what that has done for African developers, and it's given them an opportunity now to say, listen, on a global scale we can produce something that's tangible, something that is moving forward towards the future," he said.
Among companies launching apps at the event were Blackberry, Samsung, Microsoft and Apple.