If you are a mobile developer or interested in mobile technology, it’s time for another interesting time for Mobile Monday, June edition. We covered the last event here. The focus this time will be on Mobile applications platforms and there will be Lawyers and Platform companies on ground. It will also be an interesting time to network with other stakeholders in the industry. If you have an interesting app to showcase to attendees, it’s a good platform to get a review of your product.

Details

• Event: MoMo Nigeria June Meetup
• Date: Monday, June 20, 2011
• Time: 5:30 – 8pm
• Venue: Robert’s (Brown’s) Cafe, V/I
• Theme: Mobile applications platforms

Register here.

(Cross-posted on MoMoNigeria.org)

In Lagos, you spend 3hours or more on a trip that normally should take 2 minutes. This is due bad road in most cases but lack of information about traffic situation in alternative areas is a problem. Traffic.com.ng hope to solve that by providing real-time traffic information a areas of Lagos.

How it works

To Report Traffic Status

Type the road/area you want to report, as you are typing it shows the full spelling of the road, select the road where it starts (“From” where there traffic status start) to where it stops. Nigerian roads are usually separated by bus stops while some are one way; if it’s one way or you don’t know the particular bus stop, just type where it starts, our program takes care of the rest.

To view Traffic report

On the homepage, on the “View Traffic Report From” you can see live data coming in, to view report for a particular area, just type the road/area on the box provided it will auto complete if the area is covered, click view and you the report displayed.
You might also want to view separately, click on “Road” click at the top link on the site, choose the road you want to view report from and it will be displayed.

Alert Subscription
On the home page, click subscribe, fill the form.  Then login to the members’ area.

• Click “My Route”
• Then Add Alert
• Choose road/area you want to receive alerts from.
• Then select the medium through which you want to receive the alerts; Email, Twitter or SMS
• Select time you want to receive the alerts
• Click subscribe

With the “View Subscription” click on the page, you can view all your alerts, edit and delete them accordingly. All subscriptions are free!
All our services are for free for your use, feel free to explore our world.

Mobile Web

If you visit traffic.com.ng, you will be shown the mobile version of the site, and you can perform all actions above.

SMS

Well, the way it works is you send and SMS with “traffic” keyword to: 07026702053 with the information you want to retrieve about a certain location.

Example to notify us of traffic status;

Type: Traffic status Adeola-Odeku to Ahmadu-Bello is free

Send to: 07026702053

Example to get traffic report:

Type: Traffic report Ojota

Send to: 07026702053

You will get response about the status of your message. If you are requesting report, just send the above message you will get to and fro report about the specified area.

Check out the site here: Traffic.com.ng

Disclosure: Traffic.com.ng is also founded by WebtrendsNG Founder.

2.8% growth in African Mobile Ad Impressions in first 3 Months of 2011 says InMobi
… Over 3.6 billion Mobile Advertising Impressions a Month in Africa on InMobi’s Network Alone …

Johannesburg, May 17, 2011 – InMobi, the world’s largest independent mobile advertising network, today released its latest Africa Regional Insights.   These provide a snapshot of mobile advertising trends on the continent between December 2010 and March 2011. Data from the report shows that InMobi now serves over 3.6 billion impressions a month in Africa and that these mobile ad impressions have grown consistently by 3% during the period.

Africa specific data includes:

· 36% growth in mobile impressions in Nigeria in the period

· 16% growth in mobile impressions in Kenya the period

· Nokia OS holds 36.9% impression share, followed by Symbian OS at 25.9% and RIM OS at 2.9%

The data also indicates  that while 8 out of 10 mobile adverts in Africa are delivered on either a Nokia or Samsung device, when it comes to smart phonesplatforms in Africa, RIM reigns supreme; although RIM/iPhone OS/Android collectively only represent 4.1% of the total Africa ecosystem.  In fact, in just 2 months, RIM has grown 2,5% share points while Nokia, which owns the majority market share (in total number of handsets, rather than just smartphones), has remained static.

“RIM Blackberry’s growth during the period is proof that the lowering cost of data plans and devices will lead to smart phone adoption in Africa,” comments Isis Nyong’o, Vice President and Managing Director InMobi Africa. “It will be critical to track both RIM and Android market penetration as a key to growth in mobile advertising ecosystem”

The report also showed that South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt represent the largest mobile markets in Africa.  South Africa maintains position as the largest of thesewith in excess of 850 million impressions a month.

James Lamberti, VP of Global Research & Marketing at InMobi says, “Africans continue to increase their mobile media consumption with both advanced phone and smartphone uptake growing at a consistent pace in the last quarter.  However, advanced phones still dominate with 81% market share, so smartphones have yet to gain significant traction.”

The full report is available to download at www.inmobi.com/research.

• Event: MoMo Nigeria Lagos MeetUp
• Date: Monday, May 23, 2011
• Time: 5:30 – 8pm
• Venue: Robert’s (Brown’s) Cafe, V/I,

Nigeria saw a massive growth year-over-year growth and bounced to the 7^th place in the world with the number users using Opera mini.

Nigeria

? Page-view growth since February 2010: 82.2 %

? Unique-user growth since February 2010: 90.3 %

? Data transfer growth since February 2010: 80.8 %

? Page-views per user: 376

? Data transferred per user (MB): 5

? Data transferred per page view (KB): 14

Top 10 sites in the Nigeria (unique users)

1. facebook.com

2. google.com

3. yahoo.com

4. bbc.co.uk

5. goal.com

6. wikipedia.org

7. my.opera.com

8. vanguardngr.com

9. youtube.com

10. cnnmobile.com

Top handsets for February 2011

1. Nokia 5130 XpressMusic

2. Nokia 2700c

3. Nokia 3110c

4. Nokia 2690

5. Nokia 2330c

6. Nokia N72

7. Nokia 2600c

8. Nokia N70

9. Nokia 6300

10. Nokia E63

Top Ten World Wide

1. Russia
2. Indonesia
3. India
4. Ukraine
5. China
6. South Africa
7. Nigeria
8. Vietnam
9. United States
10. Brazil

Gtbank is the leading bank in Nigeria in term of technology driven service delivery. Having successfully maintained top-five most visited Nigerian site for close to 2years and effective implementation of social media in its operation, it’s setting the pace in the country.

Talking about the app, it’s name Mobile Velocity or simply put; MoVe. Some of its features are listed below;

• Connect to your account through mobile banking site
• Locate any Guaranty Trust Bank ATM or Branch
• Find out real Time FX Rates with Currency Calculator
• Keep in touch on the go with Stock Market reports

The app is based on Nokia codebase and can be downloaded view OVI store.

Let’s cross our legs as we expect them to develop for other platforms like Android, BlackBerry, normal J2ME, iPhone, Bada and others. It may not be fast given the strength of Nokia in the country but, let wait and see.

The launch of Gmail came with a radically designed interface that gives you conversation-like mailbox this time around what you get from Facebook is your social interaction in a single spot. With the new system you can do the following;

• seamless
• informal
• immediate
• personal
• simple
• minimal
• short

In Mark’s word: “This is not an email killer. This is a messaging experience that includes email as one part of it,” and that “This is the way that the future should work,”
The platform is also integrated with SMS and will be rolled out slowly in coming months.

In my view, this is the future of communication…”INTEGRATED!” So, Facebook is relying on it’s current strenght to own the future.

We caught up with Yomi Adegboye’s one of Nigeria’s brightest minds in mobile technology. We shared his mind with us about the industry and its future. He also took us through how mobilitynigeria.com got started. Read through and enjoy our interview with him.

WTN: Let meet your sir

Yomi: I am Oluyomi Adegboye, a simple, unassuming person who loves to work behind-the-scenes. I love to have fun at all that I do. I was born in 1973 and have been married since 2000. My wife and I are blessed two kids. I am Managing Director of Alireta Nigeria Limited, one of Nigeria’s top web hosts. I also own and run Mobility Nigeria, the largest, most visited, most referenced, and most respected online source of information on mobile technology in Nigeria. Lastly, but most fulfilling of all, I am a Bible teacher and a serving pastor at Crown Bible Church in Lagos.

WTN: Your site, mobilitynigeria.com is one of the best resources on mobile technology in the country, gist us about it

Yomi: Mobility Nigeria started was born out of my personal passion for mobile connected and computing devices. There was a vacuum in the Nigerian webspace with regards getting credible information about mobile technology in Nigeria, so I simply stepped in with Mobility Nigeria. At first, progress was slow. Today, it is one of the highest traffic Nigerian websites, and certainly the most respected in view of all things mobile in Nigeria. When people get stuck with their devices and networks, they turn to Mobility Nigeria. When people from different continents need information about mobile technology in Nigeria, they turn to Mobility Nigeria.

Due to popular demand, the site now includes a delivery-only mobile store. We deliver medium and high-end mobile phones to customers located as far away as Maiduguri and Owerri. Above all, I am simply having a ball running Mobility Nigeria.

WTN: Talking about mobile and internet what opportunities are there for us to tap in Nigeria?

Yomi: The Nigerian mobile and internet landscape is still virgin territory.

One, while our internet penetration has jumped in recent times, the huge bulk of it is still in terms of social networking. There is still a dearth of quality content creation on the internet among Nigerians. As a webhost administrator, I am privileged to have access to information about the content of Nigerian websites.  Sadly, the majority do not offer anything compelling in terms of really credible and useful information or in terms of services. There are a handful of brilliant Nigerian websites out there, but those are clearly in the minority. Where there is a dearth, there are opportunities.

Two, as a country we are still skirting the edges of e-commerce. Most of the services passed off as e-payment platforms now are still so cumbersome (and in some cases simply unaffordable) that nothing much is happening in this area for now. That leaves huge opportunities. Imagine what will happen when we have functional and affordable e-commerce platforms in place. The opportunities for both e-payment platform providers and merchants who will ride on such platforms are simply huge.

Three, pretty much the same scenario with e-commerce exists for mobile payments.

All in all, we are still scratching the surface here in Nigeria. We really do not need to imagine the possibilities. They are all too glaring.

WTN: Connectivity is one of the problems we are facing in the country, what do you think telecom/ISP should do to solve this?

Yomi: We must note first that telecoms providers and ISPs face tremendous challenges that have been well documented over time. It is almost a miracle that they are able to stay in operation at all. As such, they deserve our understanding.

Still, it is my informed opinion that there is a lot of overselling going on in the ISP business. By overselling, I mean that operators take on more subscribers than they have the capacity for. Naturally, this leads to less than satisfactory performance and broadband subscribers get to experience narrowband speeds.

I must add that overselling is also a prevalent practice in the web hosting sector as well – and the results are obvious. Service providers need to stop this practice.

It is also a known fact that the majority of subscribers use up very little resources while a select minority consume the majority of bandwidth. This is in spite of the fact that for the most part both those who use much and those who use little pay uniform tariffs.

For example, I am aware of some of them who charge differently for different cap speeds. There are also those who charge differently for monthly bandwidth. Those are good solutions which should yield dividends if overselling is put aside.

If ISPs make people pay for what they use, instead of taking everyone on and making the service unusable for the majority, we should see an improvement in subscriber experience.

WTN: Their prices seem to be the same across the board, is there a kind of cartel behind this?

Yomi: Well, it very often looks so. However, there is no way to prove that. Personally, I think that it is more of the “follow-follow” syndrome and no-one wanting to rock the boat or stick their neck out.

WTN: How will you rate Nigerian internet market in terms of how we have harnessed is opportunity?

Yomi: By and large, we haven’t harnessed the opportunity too well. As mentioned earlier, there are a few stellar performances, but the average is less than satisfactory.

For example, there are internet startups springing up all over the country. I have been watching things keenly for years. One of these has brilliant ideas and concepts, but most of those startups have no viable income generation plan. Part of the problem is a lack of e-commerce and m-payment platforms. As we see better infrastructure and enabling environment, it will be easier for the average Joe to play profitably on the Nigerian internet market.

It is not a hopeless forecast though. At least, more and more people are getting on the internet market. The more the merrier. Hopefully when the enabling environment comes on stream, things will get really hot.

WTN:  What is missing is it funding or innovator to put Nigeria in the right place?

Yomi: It is a combination of both.

Funding is largely missing. The Nigerian business environment demands 2-3 years of rent, sundry government levies and taxes, extra expenses such as expenses for fuel generation, et al. Yet, banks generally only pay lip-service to supporting SMEs. Some months back, my company approached our bankers for a small loan. Our bank records were good. We had the cash flow to cover the loan, but we were told that the group head had put an embargo on loans below N10 million.

We did not need even a million. We needed less than that to cover a temporary shortfall of funds and we were disqualified because we weren’t asking for N10 million. Being small was our only offense.

Small and medium enterprises are largely on their own in the Nigerian market.

There isn’t a lot of innovation out there either, but as I have already stated there are some ideas that simply cannot fly now because certain infrastructure are not in place. I doff my hat to the individuals and groups that are able to make things happen right now inspite of the prevailing environment.

WTN: Can a world class mobile/web application emerge from Nigeria?

Yomi: The question (not the answer) is “Why not?”  All someone has to do is either look for a unique need and meet it, or play around long enough with ideas till he or she hits a home run.

WTN:   What should we expect from you anytime from now?

Yomi: That is a difficult question for me to answer. While I am a very brilliant and intelligent person, I am not ambitious as most people define ambition. I don’t live looking for the next big thing. I enjoy what I do now, what I have, where I am and try to simply make a difference in the little everyday things.

Right now, I am happily serving our webhosting clients at Alireta, running Mobility Nigeria, and pastoring. I am involved with mentoring young people through AspirePrime.com, a personal project. I am also helping married couples to address the most vital issue marriage through The Marriage Bed Seminars, a new project of mine.

You will agree with me that I have my hands full already. I’ll just keep being me, taking life one day at a time, and putting the best effort into what I am already doing, and innovating with those. Still, who knows tomorrow? If I have anything new, you’ll certainly hear from me!

WTN: Where do you see Nigerian Internet market in the next 3-5years?

Yomi: The Nigerian internet market will grow in leaps and bounds. With the arrival of two major submarine cables, we are looking at lower tariffs and better service. That will promote growth. Hopefully, the other factors required to mature the market as discussed already will be thrown into the mix as well and Nigerians can play ball and truly compete on the global scene.

WTN: What should we be doing now to get there?

Yomi: Everything that we can. It is always a bad idea to sit down and do nothing because there are problems on ground. We should be doing everything within our power to move forward and find a way around limitations. Even if it is one step forward that we are able to make, one step is progress. Hopefully after taking one step, we can take another, and another, and so on.

WTN: Any advice for technopreneurs?

Yomi: Dare. Dare to imagine. Dare to think. Dare to plan. Dare to step out. You won’t get anything done by complaining about the shortcomings. Complain if you will, but dare to aspire!

WTN: Thank you

Yomi: Thank you for the opportunity, and do keep up the good job.

Connect with Yomi: Yomiadegboye.com, on Facebook here.

Emmanuel is the Principal Consultant at MobileMoneyAfrica and a leading mobile commerce on the Africa space. We asked couple of questions regarding the upcoming event MobiFest2010 of which we are partner; these question can shed light on some of the questions you might want to ask, go through and endeavor to ask more in the comment section below.

WTN: What is mobiFest2010 About?

Emmanuel: MobiFEST  is Nigeria’s first mobile apps, contents and devices
conference and exhibition. It will hold in the heart of the Nigerian
youth market in the Yaba axis of Lagos, targeting  students from
about five higher institutions. MobiFEST was conceived to accelerate
mobile apps development focusing on areas of strong compelling need
across all areas of human endeavors  in Nigeria.It will be hosted at
the University of Lagos.

WTN: How will it impact Nigerian mobile market?

Emmanuel: Immediately what we are looking at is a Nation wide buzz on mobile apps and how it can be leveraged to address some developmental challenges
in Nigeria.When this has been achieved,the next stage is to commence
development efforts in making this a reality.

WTN: From the developer’s perspective… what should we expect?

Emmanuel: Basically, we want the event to be a launch pad for Nigerian
developers to gain a share of the market. Nigerians are very
intelligent people. However, it is important to note that  abilities
are limited where there are no opportunities. My expectation is that
the mobile network operators and device manufacturers active in the
mobile landscape in Nigeria will consider setting up an innovation lab
in Nigeria where Young mobiprenuers can develop their ideas. Such a
lab can be housed in one of our universities to create a hub for a
thriving mobile apps developer community.

WTN: What should we expect from the business perspective too?

Emmanuel: If new innovative services are successfully launched and it becomes
commercial success, then those players will reap the benefit of such
efforts. If we have More Nigerians striving to become the likes of
Alexandre Amosu, Chika Nwobi, Goke Akinboro in their own
communities,then we are on our way to launching a Nigerian Renaissance
via the mobile technology.

WTN: Looking at the speakers they are such movers in the industry, is there going to be a kind of synergy between budding technopreneurs and the established players?

Emmanuel: The essence of bringing the established players like you rightly
noted,is to bridge the gap and learn from them.The disconnection
between these two groups is the reason for the limited growth in that
sector. We need to come together,share experiences and forge a way
forward.

WTN: In the mail we got, top mobile brands are coming to look at innovations  worth investing in, what’s your advice to our mobile developers?

Emmanuel: Apart from top Brands, some enterprenuers are actively seeking out
young developers to explore outsourcing developmental jobs from EU /
North America.While it will be great to attract these scouts,my advice
is,present or showcase what you have and where you are. Dont  hurry  to
complete your developments only to get it wrong. Be proud of your
efforts and show is as it is,even if it is still at conceptual
stage. You may not just know who will be interested at that stage.

WTN: Looking forward, what chapter will this event open, will it be an annual event?

Emmanuel: It will give us the ability to measure what is out there. Measure the efforts,understand the short falls in terms of resources and what is
needed to move forward.It is my sincere believe that this humble
efforts will open a new vista for Nigeria developers as we celebrate
the 9th year of GSM in Nigeria and hopefully, we may get our version
of mobile Monday and maybe, an innovation lab to make all these dreams
a reality. It will be an annual event and we hope to replicate it
across the geo-political zones in Nigeria.

Thank you.