The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Mobile

  • Mobile tech to revolutionise marketing

    Mobile technology is the

    next step in the market

    ing evolution and a medium which would redefine brands interaction and engagement with their target audiences on the continent, experts have said.

    With half of the continent’s people benefitting from an increasing access to the internet for the first time on mobile devices, the Group Managing Director/ Founder of Terragon Group, Mr. Elo Umeh, at the just concluded Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain said the industry was experiencing a tremendous growth in the mobile market.

    “Mobile penetration in Africa is stipulated to be about 80 per cent in 2013 and growing. Right now, there are more mobile devices than there are television sets. Mobile and digital services have the potential to generate significant earnings and boost the economies in Africa,” he noted.

    African markets account for the highest growth of smart phones globally. Report from a research by Gartner Inc, shows African Telecoms firms specifically are expected to generate over $1.3 billion in mobile advertising revenue alone by 2016.

    “The global market for mobile advertising will reach $18 billion in 2014 and grow to $41.9 billion by the end of 2017 this information goes to show the potential that mobile advertising has, not only in Africa but globally,” he added.

    Terragon, a digital media marketing agency, made its debut at the event with three businesses.

     

  • Firm launches mobile portal for SMEs

    In its quest to deepen online business in Nigeria Mobiz has launched a new mobile website where Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) could trade their goods and services at reduced hosting cost.

    The Co-founder of the online portal, Mr. Deepankar Rustagi, explained that the mobile site would be fully optimised for all features and smart phones.

    When deployed, the mobile website is expected to support SME businesses that have over time been limited to the areas they are located.

    Rustagi who observed that SMEs operators that have cash constraints to launch advert campaigns would find the site useful and economical to do business that would give them more visibility.

    With over 60 per cent of Internet users on mobile devices and 88 per cent of internet traffic in Nigeria originating from mobile devices, Rustagi said having a mobile site would engender an increase in SMEs customer base. “It gives business an identity, a face that goes beyond just a business name, it becomes an entity customers should relate with. You can communicate with customers and site visitors via videos and images uploaded on the site,” Rustagi said.

    He explained that the newly launched site was a special promotion to develop easy to operate mobile websites for SMEs at a giveaway price of N999.

    According to him, Mobiz mobile site would help SMEs acquire customer information, enabling them to know their customers and their needs and how to tailor their services to suit their purpose.

    The mobile site gives SMEs nationwide visibility as it is linked with various social media. It enables video marketing, promotes contextual advertising and would be linked to one of the most visited sites in Nigeria, he said.

    “With Mobiz solution, your website will receive regular traffic with numerous users searching for various goods and services constantly. Products, services and price information can also be placed on the mobile website making communication with customers and site visitors very easy,” Rustagi said.

    To access the mobile website, SMEs are advised to log on to www.mobiz.ng/start. The Mobiz mobile website helps SMEs to generate more leads, inquiries and sales for their business while building a stable followership network, he explained further.

    He assured that the opportunities available for SMEs business as a result of the Mobiz mobile site were numerous going by the large number of mobile internet users in Nigeria. Mobile site regularly priced at N1999, he said is being offered at a 50 per cent discount of N999. SMEs can own a mobile website with their own domain name.

    He said the site would enable SMEs an opportunity to choose from a wide variety of templates by inserting their business images and videos, connect with customers via social networks such as twitter, facebook, and integrate M-commerce payment, thereby enabling customers pay for their products or services directly into the vendor’s bank account.

     

  • Birth of a mobile night club

    Birth of a mobile night club

    A unique club experience took Port Harcourt by storm penultimate Friday, leading fun seekers in their hundreds to the Aztech Arcum, located at the city centre. Tagged the Gulder Club Ultimate, the makeshift venue was shaken to its very foundation by music blaring from the repertoire of famous Lagos Disc Jockey, DJ Humility.

    A little fun drama here and there, as Channel O VJ and host for the debut edition of activation, Denrele Edun, brought ladies to the dance floor, frolicking in pretentious competition.

    The first in a series of what organisers call a city-to-city experience, notable at the VIP arena housing officials of Nigerian Breweries Plc, were famous celebrities like, filmmaker Kunle Afolayan; Wazobia Radio personality, Yaw; comedian Tee A; music star, DJ Zeez, Tunde Ednut and Nollywood actress, Beverly Naya, among others.

    The presence of the stars speaks about the class of the show, and with Denrele’s nine appearances in different jackets, there was no telling anyone of the uniqueness of the club session.

    Designed by Remi Buttons, Denrele’s outfits dominated talks all through the night, and fashion pundits say the red carpet host has outdone himself this time.

    Denrele had showcased four crazy and unique jackets on the red carpet and five other daring blazers during the entire event with each jacket costing over N100, 000.

  • Visa backs financial literacy mobile app

    Global payments technology company, Visa, has announced a mobile application development challenge, meant to stimulate the development of innovative web, mobile applications and games.

    It will also assist in teaching money management skills and supporting the advancement of financial literacy in Nigeria.

    “The challenge will bring key financial services players like the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), commercial banks, personal finance non-governmental organisations and other stakeholders together with software developers and designers, to create interesting applications and games. These applications and games will advise Nigerians on how best to manage their money and financial affairs, and also educate them on the tools available to meet their financial needs,” the statement said.

    Ade Ashaye, Country Manager for Visa in West Africa, said these applications and games will advise Nigerians on how best to manage their money and financial affairs, and also educate them on the tools available to meet their financial needs.

    “At Visa, we are dedicated to increasing financial literacy among the unbanked through strategic partnerships and educational programs. This is the motivation behind the Financial Literacy Challenge,” the statement added.

    The Chief Executive Officer, Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, Bosun Tijani, said: “Collaborating with Visa on the Financial Literacy Challenge creates room for Nigeria’s technology talent to turn their energy and skills to building apps that will boost the skills and confidence of Nigerians as they make financial decisions. We are pleased to be deploying our Open Living Labs approach to generate and develop truly innovative apps and games that are reflective of the Nigerian experience.”

     

  • How mobile number portability will work

    Six years after the idea was mooted, the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) took off on Monday. Its implementation holds a lot of promises for subscribers, the regulator and operators, reports LUCAS AJANAKU

     

    History was made on Monday when the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) was launched at the Muson Centre, Onikan, Lagos.

    At the historic event, stakeholders listed the benefits MNP to global system for mobile (GSM) communication subscribers.

    Director, Regulatroy Affairs and Special Projects, Airtel Nigeria, Osondu Nwokoro, said the MNP would “enable a mobile subscriber to migrate from one service provider to another while retaining the phone number allocated to him by his original/former service provider.” He added that the mobile number is a unique means of identification, such as the Social Security and National ID Numbers in other organised jurisdictions.

    He listed four major stakeholder groups that would benefit from MNP. They are subscribers, operators, Federal Government and the NCC.

    Experts say subscribers will have the opportunity to retain their numbers and have the freedom to choose and benefit from high quality service, tariffs, coverage and product range which will be induced by competition.

    Operators would profit from the upgrade of their infrastructure for optimal use, showcase innovative product offerings and services and increase their market share, they added.

    With the MNP, the Federal Government would boost its contributions to social overhead capital and increase the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and foreign direct investment (FDI). This, analysts said, would lead to improvement in national communications infrastructure, described as one of the cardinal objectives of the government.

    For the NCC, it would take the burden of regulation off its shoulders as the industry would self-regulatory in terms of quality, coverage, competition and tariffs. It would also lessen the resources allocated to address industry concerns while the resources saved can beused for other industry issues even as there will be less enforcement actions.

    To ensure a seamless operation of MNP, the NCC engaged the services of Interconnect Clearing House Nigeria Limited (ICN), also a licencee of the NCC, to handle the porting in (migration of a subscriber into a new networ) and porting out (migration of subscribers form its old network) process. The firm also partnered Telcordia and Saab Grintek to implement the scheme.

    ICN Chief Operating Officer, Uche Onwudiwe, described the porting process as simple. He said all a willing subscriber that is dissatisfied with his/her service provider needs to do is walk into the shop of the recipient operator (the network service provider into which a subscriber ports in) and request for form which is filled. After the completion of that formalty and presentation evidence to prove that the owner of the SIM is actually the person requesting for porting, an SMS in which port will be sent to 3232 from where it will be picked for action by the ICN which will begin the process of completing the process by contacting the recipient (the network service provider into which a subscriber ports in). Upon the completion of the process, a new SIM card would be given to the subcriber by the recipient network operator while the subscribers would be required to register the new SIM again.

    According to him, the process will take a about 48 hours to complete, adding that no operator has the right to stop the process from going on.

    MTN Nigeria Cief Executive Officer Brett Goshen said the telco would leverage on the experience it has gained in its operations in other climes where MNP had been introduced, adding that customer care officials had been trained in all the telcos’ shops to attend to subscribers who want to join the network.

    His Airtel counterpart, Segun Ogunsanya, said its network is prepared to accommodate new subscribers. Also, Olayinka Olafimihan of Glo and Ndidi of Etisalat said their companies were prepared for MNP.

    Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Eugene Juwah, said the commission has developed guidelines for the process. “It is pertinent to mention that there are rules governing the process of customers porting from one network to another and regulating the implementation by network providers. These rules are contained in the Mobiel Number Portability Business Rules already published and available on the commisssion’s website. In addition, the commission has also developed Regulations for Mobile Number Portability,” Juwah said, adding that the documents would provide guidance, promote transparency and healthy competition among service providers.

    ICN Chairman, Admiral Allison Madueke (retd), said the firm has its main data centre in Lagos and a disaster recovery centre in Abuja where subscribers’ porting information would be stored.

    He said the data centres are secured against cyber attacks. “The number of fireworks we have created is adequate to protect everybody that is porting and the process of porting needs a lot of screening. When you go to the porting centre, you will be given a from to fill,” he said, adding that the attendants will have to check the authenticity of the information that has been provided.

    Director, Regulatory Affairs and chair, Implementation Committee, MNP, Ms Josephine Amuwa, said subscribers intending to port must first exhaust the airtime on their phones. On the requirement that a subscriber would have to remain on the network, once ported, for 90 days, she said. It is for the ICN to recover the cost of doing the porting, she said, adding that porting is free.

    Chairman House of Representatives Communication Committee, Hon Oyetunde Ojo and his Senate counterpart, Senator Gilbert Nnaji, described the introduction of MNP as marking a new dawn in annals of the country’s telecoms sector. They pledged to continue to work with the regulator to ensure that the subscribers get vaue for the money they spend on making calls.

    Chairman, NCC board, Peter Igho, said MNP is a scheme on which the Nigerians are in agreement, adding that the commission embarked on extensive consultation before implementing the project.

    Originally conceived by the former executive vice chairman of the NCC, Ernest Ndukwe in 2007, it could not be implemented because there was no data base as subscribers bought SIM cards without registering them before use.

    Nigeria is Africa’s largest mobile market with tremendous growth potential given that penetration was just 57.4 per cent at the end of 2010. With the rapidly improving mobile infrastructure and intense compettion among mobile operators, it is expected that the numbers of mobile subscribers will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 15 per cent during 2009-2014, with a penetration rate exceeding 88 per cent by the end of 2014. Latest figures from the NCC show that subscriber base has passed 113 million.

    Analysts say the success of MNP scheme may be undermined by the fact that many Nigerians have more than one mobile phone and SIM cards, which enable them to enjoy the services of two or more service providers.

    Aside Nigerians getting used to clutching more than one phone (as status symbol as well as a result of inefficient service), there is also the problem of long delays before porting. Forty-eight hours are certainly a long time to complete the exercise and the requirement that the subscriber will have to acquire the SIM of the recipient network, engage in another round of registration may too unwieldy for prospective porting subscribers.

    Added to this is the level of awareness. While it is true that virtually all mobile phone users in the country know about the problem of persistent poor service quality, it may not be true that they have been sufficiently informed about the new freedom being given to them through MNP.

    Against this background, the NCC, operators and the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS) would need to do more by creating public awareness. This could be through newspaper adverts, radio jingles and distribution of handbills written in all the major languages of the country.

    It is said of the about 62 countries that have introduced MNP, few have seen more than 30 per cent of subscribers in the market using the service.

    But sector analysts say the success rate should not be judged by the number of customers that port, but by the quality of infrastructure and competitiveness that will be generated in the telecoms sector.

  • Mobile money firms collaborate

    Mobile Money Operators (MMOs) are to collaborate on Shared Agency Network to foster growth, an official of Fortis Mobile Money, Mr Kunle Ogunmola, has said.

    Ogunmola said the network would provide operators the opportunities to share the same scheme or platform for growth.

    He said: “Shared Agency Network, among mobile money operators, will enable them to have a single access to scheme or platform for growth, as well as reducing the cost of setting up an agency.”

    He said collaborations among the operators on the issue of shared agency network is more popular, as against merger and acquisition in the industry.

     

  • Stakeholders chide mobile money firms

    Stakeholders have berated the 16 mobile money firms for not living up to expectation a year after they were licensed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). They said the mobile money companies were still battling with the problems relating to capacity building, agent networks, and strong outlays.

    The Managing Director, Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), Ade Shonubi, said mobile money operators are yet to realise the huge potential in the country. He said with a market worth billions of naira, what they have on ground is a far cry from their targets.

    Speaking at a stakeholders’ meeting on cash-less programme in Lagos, he said the NIBSS would continue to do its best to make all the operators in the cash-less value chain achieve their set objectives.

    Also, the Managing Director, Mobile Money Africa, Emmanuel Okogwale, said the aggregate value of mobile money companies was about N150,000 billion, stressing that the market can boast of $2 billion if the potential are well harnessed in the sub-sector.

    He advised the operators to work harder to solve the teething problems that still affect their activities, arguing that the market has the capacity to produce billion of dollars like its counterpart in Kenya.

     

  • Mobile payment review’ll foster growth, says NeFF

    The mobile payment system will receive a boost, after the ongoing review of its operational guidelines, the Nigerian electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) has said.

    NeFF Chairman, Mr Emmanuel Obaigbona, said activities in mobile payment industry would take a new dimension after the review.

    The review, he said, would make the mobile payment system productive, remove certain bottlenecks impeding its growth, and make it competitive.

    He said: “The review will help in improving infrastructure, and foster an enduring relationship among telecom companies, licensed mobile payment firms, agents, among other relevant stakeholders in the mobile payment chain. When this happens, the industry is bound to improve in terms of operations and profitability.

    Obaigbona said the review is taking place years after its guidelines were released.

    “From 2003, many guidelines have been released by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to bring about the necessary growth in the industry. These include Electronic banking guidelines, Point of Sales (PoS) guidelines, Switches guidelines, Automated Teller Machine guidelines, the mobile payment guidelines, among others. But what we are doing is the reviewing of mobile payment guidelines. We hope to conclude it soon. We have gone far on it. It is about to be ready. When it is ready, it would be presented to the CBN and the Bankers’ Committee,” he said.

    According to him, increased attention is being given to the development of the nation’s electronic payment system to strengthening the economy.

    A Senior Official of Shared Office Department, CBN, Mr Chidi Umeano, had earlier told this newspaper that the apex bank would tackle certain problems affecting the mobile payment sub-sector.

    Umeano said infrastructure is one of the major problems facing the mobile payment operators, stressing that there are on-going efforts to address the issue.

    In the same view, the Managing Director, Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS), Mr Adebisi Shonubi, had in a review of the performance of mobile payment firms, said the value of transactions recorded by the operators has not been too impressive.

     

  • Mobile apps challenge for girls

    As part of the International Telecommunications Union’s Girls in ICT project & Tech Needs Girls campaign, Women in Technology in Nigeria, has unveiled the Technovation Challenge to Nigeria to encourage young girls develop interest in the development of applications.

    A statement by WITIN noted that the Mobile App Challenge has been opened for secondary school girls (aged 13-18) who would work in teams of five to develop mobile apps, conduct market research, write business plans, and create a “pitch” for funding.

    According to the statement, each team is expected to work with both a classroom teacher at their school and a female mentor/role model from the technology industry, adding that WITIN will lead mentors in Nigeria who would guide teachers to train teams from now till April about how to build the apps. The training, it noted, will culminate in a global competition where teams compete for funding to launch their company and take their app to market.

    The goal of the programme is to promote women in technology by inspiring girls to see themselves not just as users of technology, but as inventors, designers, builders, and entrepreneurs in the technology industry.

     

  • ‘Improved telecoms services’ll expand mobile banking’

    FBN Capital has said one of the major gains of the planned introduction of mobile number portability in the first quarter of this year would be an improved service quality, which will translate to expansion in mobile banking service.

    The firm noted that the holiday period had brought unseasonal complaints about the service provided by the mobile operators. It added that there’s correlation between poor services arguing that consumers may have more than one handset to increase their chances of making a successful call.

    It said: “The complaints are not new: the NCC (industry regulator) fined the four main operators a total of N1.17billion in mid-2012 for failure to meet its key performance indicators.”

    The firm said the operators are reported to have invested massively on network upgrade with the market leader, MTN, spending a whopping US$1.4billion last year alone, and Airtel US$600 million since acquiring the operations of Zain.

    “Help for the consumer may be at hand with the arrival of mobile number portability, which both the operators and the regulator anticipate in Q1 2013. The industry argues that service will improve when consumers can more easily swap providers.

    “The broader positives of an improved service are numerous. It would help the rapid expansion of mobile banking, which is in its infancy in Nigeria.

    “Another beneficiary would be the FGN’s plan to distribute 10 million mobiles to farmers this year so that they are informed on the availability and price of fertiliser and other input,” FBN noted in its recent report.

    According to FBN capital research on market shares of the telcos, MTN has 42.5 per cent, while Globacom followed with 20.7 per cent. Airtel has 19.7 per cent, Etisalat; 13.4 per cent while others, including the code division multiple access (CDMA) and fixed line operators shared the remaining 3.7 per cent.