Scanning the news today on mobile + africa over Google is throwing up some interesting dots that I thought might be fun to connect. I'm seeking signs of whether the sub Saharan African mobile phone market is about to take off the way the Indian (or even South Asian?) market did about four years ago when Reliance Comm just dropped their basic sms and phone call pricing. Of course, in the Indian market, that happened almost at the same time that our friend Nokia launched their then lowest priced phone ever, the immortal 1100. To be honest, that phone has been both the saviour and the bane of the Finnish company in global emerging markets. However, I digress.
I've just come across
bits on Nokia's emerging market moves (something I'm sad to confess I stopped getting excited about about a year or so ago when I decided we needed to move on to making larger scale things happen in the wireless world, not just what one, albeit fearlessly pioneering, company would do), and I've come across these other bits just now. Snippets first:
Essar, an
Indian conglomerate's moves in Uganda and Congo's telcom sector.
South African pressure continues on cellular operator pricing structure. The
indisputable fact that Africans pay higher rates for basic services (with Steve Song's
hard work on comparitive pricing across SSA here). And now, some interesting bits,
from The East African:
Kenyan telecom companies are bracing for an increase in customer migration and the possibility of price wars when the proposed mobile number portability becomes a reality in a few months.
Speaking separately to The EastAfrican, the four operators — Safaricom, Zain, Orange and Yu — have indicated that they will start positioning themselves for the technology in such a way that it makes a positive difference for their subscribers.
“The move by the industry regulator is welcome and we are ready to embrace it,” said Michael Joseph, Safaricom CEO.
Yu, in case you weren't aware is the brand under which Essar operates in Kenya. Taking all of this together, especially this last one, I'm getting a stronger and stronger sense that a major upheaval is imminent over the next few months in the overall mobile pricing landscape in Africa. And if its anything like India's growth rates then the whole market is going to change, dramatically. And not just for actual tangible artifacts either, but also services and programmes and plans. What happens when the combined influence and effect of Nokia Money and FrontlineSMS: Credit start making inroads into the demographic population?
