Mobile West Africa 2014 kicked off yesterday with Focus Day. Focus Day is an opportunity for experts in the industry share their experiences and lessons learnt so far. It takes the form of presentations punctuated by interactive sessions with the audience.
There were a lot of lessons learnt from the various presentations and interactive sessions. I’ve managed to condense them into 3, I believe, very important lessons about mobile in Africa.
Africa is still a largely featurephone market
When it comes to the numbers, featurephones reign supreme. We have always known this but the reality is still rather vague for some of us. A few stats from 2go, Nigeria’s biggest social network could help put this in perspective. According to 2go Sales Director for Africa, Ricardo Pasqualotto, 2go has over 12 million active users, 10 million of which are from Nigeria alone. Of those 10 million, only about 20% access the service from a smartphone. That’s 800,000 Blackberry users and 1.2 million Android users. Well, Ricardo says they prefer to think of legacy Blackberrys as featurephones so that percentage might drop to about 12%.
It is worthy of note that 2go started out as featurephone only, before extending to smartphone territory about a year ago. Yet they have managed to garner 1.2 million Android users in that short space of time. This is most likely tied to the fact that smartphone entry levels continue to lower, thanks to proliferation of sub ₦ 20k Android phones. Nevertheless, featurephones still continue to take a huge chunk of the market share.
However, numbers aren’t that important
It is one thing to quote interesting figures like above. But these numbers don’t necessarily translate to sales and engagement levels, as the market is largely segmented. Identifying these different segments and understanding the behaviours of your target audience, will help you can make better decisions. For example, you might need to decide which mobile platforms to launch your app, or which social media platform to market your brand. Rather than focus on featurephone/smartphone/mobile OS market share, or how many people are on Facebook vs 2go, you should focus more on what is popular among your target audience.
Mobile marketing should not be overlooked
Patrick Gomes from mediaReach OMD – a media agency network focused in West and Central Africa – shared some interesting stats yesterday.
Apparently, on average, we spend about 67% of our daily entertainment time on mobile only, as against 33% in front of the TV. And even while in front of the TV, we still use our mobile devices – 33% of the time “meshing” (browsing related content), as against a whooping 67% “stacking” (browsing unrelated content). So while those premium TV ads may often inspire us to find out more using our mobile devices, more than half the time we’ really are browsing unrelated content.
There’s obviously a separate market here for mobile marketing. However, despite the apparent benefits, particularly cost-effective and better targeted ad campaigns – mobile marketing still tends to be overlooked in favour of traditional marketing. While marketing on traditional media is still a great idea, it is always a good idea to complement it mobile marketing.
There’s a lot more I would love to share with you guys, but if I am going to have any chance of making it on time to Mobile West Africa Day 1 this morning, I better sign off now. Today promises to be even more stimulating with presentations from Dr. Ernest Ndukwe and, of course, Tomi Ahonen, the most influential mobile expert in the world.
Can’t attend? Follow the conversation on Twitter with #MWA2014
Photo Credit: whiteafrican via Compfight cc
