Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and African wireless carrier Safaricom’s CEO Bob Collymore spoke at Vodafone’s Mobile for Good summit in London on December 11. The two men talked about the effect cheap smartphones are having on Africa and how they are rapidly disrupting the marketplace in the developing countries of the continent.
Most African wireless subscribers use feature phones that have talk and text capabilities. New data from ABI Research shows that 2G users account for 62.7 percent of the market while 3G connectivity accounts for 11 percent. The numbers become more interesting when looking at a country like Kenya which has had 300,000 $50 Android smartphones bought by consumers.
Wales commented that, “What I always thought about mobile in Africa…is this [smartphone adoption] is coming in the future — in the future someday. Well the someday’s happening faster than I ever realised.” Wales uses one of the $50 dollar phone as his own personal devices and said that, “The screen is a little smaller than the iPhone, it’s not quite as good but the battery lasts two days.”
The Wikipedia founder, who is currently working on an initiative to broaden access to his user generated encyclopedia called Wikipedia Zero, stated that the rapid increase in market share for smartphone is changing the digital landscape of Africa. Wales was surprised by how fast the devices were being adopted and he said that his not-for-profit organization was focusing on India but the new data has forced it to also look at Africa as an emerging market.
Wales said that, “This phone actually woke my mind up. This is what really got me energised to say let’s go back and take another look at Africa, because we had focused most of our attention on India with the view that it was ready for us to do things.” He continued that, “If you go and you take a look at the numbers [of smartphone adoption in Africa]… the upward trend — obviously it’s still a very small penetration – but that upward trend is there really strongly. If you look at the total bandwidth into Nigeria, for example, it’s skyrocketing.
Wales also added, “Things that are very hard for us to all imagine are going to happen much faster than we realize. People are going to be coming online for the first time. There’s this vibrant community of young app developers growing in Kenya and Nigeria. It’s mind-boggling to think what the possibilities are — and I’m super excited about it.”
Source: TechCrunch
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