As the first cross mobile OS app store in Africa, BandwidthBlog was curious about the performance of the Vodacom app store since its launch on 1 September 2011. We pinged Vodacom for some insight and what we found was some very interesting stats:

Vodacom revealed that the app store offers about 140 000 apps and since its launch has generated over 800 000 downloads. This is an interesting stat as all apps were free to download upon its launch and as of December 2011 the paid apps library was launched. Predictably social networking apps are the most popular downloaded apps followed by games. Taking the top spot for most downloaded app is Facebook chat which is currently the most popular app download. In the local front, the most popular app is the K53 learner’s app for first time drivers. Game apps such as Mario55 and Qeep are also performing well on the market.

As expected, the Blackberry Curve 8520 remains the leader in the top performing devices on the store as one of the most widely used devices in the South African market followed by the never say die Samsung E250.

As we previously covered results revealed that the South African personal finance app for Android, Expenza, listed on the Vodacom app store, quickly gathered more downloads in comparison to its listing in the Android Marketplace. This performance on the Vodacom app store indicates that users are excited about and receptive to a local carrier app and that there could be a bright future for carrier app stores.

The success of the Vodacom app store, paves the way for other service providers in Africa to enter into the app store market. We love the emerging trend of niche app stores, as the international app stores get bloated with millions of apps. App developers also love niche app stores as they find it increasingly difficult to get noticed in the big app stores.

Eugen Petersen of Zando explains, “What do many retail stores have in common – a limited fashion selection, long queues and often they don’t have the correct size. With Zando our aim is to provide South Africans with the same hassle-free shopping experience that millions of shoppers around the world already enjoy. We seek to be more than a traditional online fashion store but rather a place where customers’ needs are both understood and satisfied.”

The process works similar to that of other online fashion sites extremely popular in the European market.  Once you have selected the item you want, you pay for it and place the order. Shipping is free to any location countrywide. When the courier arrives with your goods you can try on everything you ordered in the different sizes you may have selected and send back what you don’t want. Once they have received the items, you are reimbursed for your purchases.

Niche online fashion stores have been very successful in savvy high LSM european markets. The question then, is will it work in our small emerging market where South Africans are exposed to a few big players who primarily sell electronics such as Kalahari and Takealot and where merchandise has to function rather than fit. With online department stores offering limited merchandise and lack of exposure for those available, there is room in the market for additional players giving South Africans what the rest of the world has available (H&M, Marks & Spencers, Forever21, asos.com).

Will Rocket Internet emulate their success in Europe here in SA? They sure have deep pockets. Word has it Rocket Internet already have close to 90 staff in Cape Town working on several internet ventures. They mean business!

Apps4Africa is bringing their global challenge to Cape Town, by hosting a launch event for their latest challenge. The winners of this year’s challenge stand the chance to win $15000 for their winning idea! This year the competition is built around the theme of climate change.

This year, participants are invited to propose a technological solution to the climate challenge currently threatening the welfare of our planet. By attending the event you will have the opportunity to hear the insights of thought-leaders and be further briefed on how you can participate in this exciting competition!

Apps4Africa is a global initiative, which encourages individuals to develop technological solutions to environmental challenges.

If you think this will interest people you know, invite them to come along too.

Event Details:

When: 11th February 2011, 9am – 1pm

Where: Umbono Offices, 6 Beach Road, Cape Town

Tickets: Click here to register for this FREE event

For more information about Apps4Africa visit their website here. 

Cape Town based startup, Quicket, has entered into the online ticketing market to provide individuals and companies with an easy to use platform that makes it possible for them to manage their own ticketing for an event as well as providing them with a database of all attendees. All of this, Quicket claims, will cost less than booking with dominant ticketing company, Computicket and aims to generate substantial competition for the likes of Webtickets, Tixsa and Ticket Break.

The self-funded Quicket, that launched on 1st September 2011, was founded by four friends Tim Church, James Tagg, Michael Kennedy and James Hedley and was originally intended to be an accommodation booking site. The guys noticed that planning a group weekend away usually results in one person taking responsibility for it including the payment which can be challenging. They wanted to find a way for people to pay separately for accommodation, but when they started going down that path they realised how difficult it would be.

Marketing manager, James Hedley explains that “There were several problems with the idea, which was intended to drive traffic to the events website. The problem with payment collection from groups is that we would essentially become a payment processor like Payfast which entails masses of fraud problems and, we also felt that many people would not be prepared to pay the commission of 4.9 % to collect money from their friends.”

Co-founder, Tim Church continues, “Although the idea of a group booking accomodation site was exciting and potentially had legs, we felt that the model would take longer to turn a profit than an online ticketing site. We have ambitions of taking another look at this in the future.”

In the spirit of their original concept, Quicket hopes to eventually be the go-to site that involves collecting money for a group project or event such as birthday present, a holiday with friends, shared celebration or a charity.

The process itself is simple. When signing up to Quicket a user can choose to create a new account or sign in with their Facebook credentials. Signing in with your Facebook details, makes it easier to share events with ‘friends’ on the social networking site. Tickets can include as much or as little information as an event organiser requires and, in the case of simple tickets for small events, can even be sent to purchasers via SMS.

Once users have purchased a ticket, they will receive an e-mail as a PDF document and stored in their Quicket account. The client will receive a guest list and can use various criteria for authentication. For bigger events with a large amount of attendees where tickets usually include a barcode that can be scanned at the event, clients can rent a barcode scanner from Quicket that plugs into a laptop and cross-references scanned tickets with the guest list upon their arrival. Once the event is over, the client has a complete database of all those that attended as well as other information they may have requested during the booking process. When creating a new event, the client has all the information already on hand.

Quicket takes a 4,9% commission on each ticket and charges those purchasing tickets R2,90 per transaction, regardless of how many tickets they buy. “If you look at the competition, that’s roughly half of the going rate,” says Hedley.

Other features include the ability for users to sell tickets for an event on their website using the Quicket widget and running events in advance for free.

Quicket is focusing on bigger events for now because they’re better for getting the site’s name out there and shows that it can handle large events and because the banks are charging   substantial merchant fees. The company hopes to bring down those fees in coming months once it is processing larger volumes.

Since its launch Quicket has turned over about R2, 000, 000 running about 40 different events that have included workshops and seminars, music festivals, school and rotary events, parties and even a bingo evening. Its weekly turnover which is steadily growing currently sits at about       R200, 000.

As far as developments go, Quicket has just implemented a coupon code system that allows event organisers to issue discount coupons to certain guests, has also made it possible to export your event to Facebook in a matter of seconds and a feature that provides event organisers the ability to collect customer information from guests i.e. blood type for a bike race or allergens for a AGM dinner. ”Quicket plans on implementing a few exciting features over the next few weeks including an affiliate programme which would allow anyone to become a Quicket reseller essentially creating a powerful marketing tool at event organisers’ finger tips,” reveals Church. “We also plan to make it possible to sell tickets directly from Facebook.

The website with both a written and video message warns authorities that it will take down over 300 media and ministry websites if it doesn’t reverse its course. The treaty has come under criticism due to the secretive way in which it was drafted and the effect it could have for users online.

Following the attack, the sight indicated that it was “Under Construction” but then was changed to display the warning message stating that its next target would be “all the media in Greece” which it would easily access with the correct usernames and passwords it has obtained.

The Greek police have since confirmed the incident and updated their Twitter account to say that its cybercrimes division’s investigation into the incident is already in progress.

In October 2011, Anonymous who is known mostly for their attacks on corporate and big business sites, targeted a web host that knowingly hosted child pornography.

Watch Anonymous’s video message after the jump.

Source: The Next Web

Joe Belfiore

Pocketnow.com has learned new details about the new Windows Phone 8 that include a number of features and themes that were accidentally revealed by senior vice president and Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore in a video intended only for partners at Nokia. The Windows Phone 8 codenamed “Apollo”, is the next version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system that is scheduled for launch after the upcoming Tango update.

According to Belfiore, the overall theme of the Windows Phone 8 hardware ecosystem will be scale and choice in order to address one of the platform’s shortcomings in competing with Android and iPhone based devices’ specifications. More specifically, Windows Phone 8 will have support for multi-core processors and microSD card support will also be added.

NFC (Near Field Communication) will also be supported, with emphasis placed on the phone’s push into contactless payments. The “wallet experience,” as he calls it, will have the capability to be carrier-branded and controlled, either by a secure element on the SIM card or utilizing hardware. In addition, NFC will  allow desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones to share content.

Rather than just share a UI with the next generation desktop and tablet OS, Windows Phone 8 will use many of the same components as Windows 8, allowing developers to re-use most of the code when porting an app from a desktop to the phone. Belfiore specifically mentions that areas of heavy overlap include the kernel, networking stacks, security and multimedia support.

The Xbox Companion app, currently found on Windows Phones, will see a partner client on Windows 8 with Skydrive support promising seamless sharing of data between devices.

At the launch of the new Windows Phone, rumoured to take place sometime in the 4th quarter of this year, Microsoft expects to offer 100 000 apps in the Marketplace. There is also likely to be support for app-to-app communication . A revamped Skype client that hooks directly into the OS, enables Skype calls to behave almost identically to regular calls with a camera app that Microsoft will allow OEM’s to customize.

The biggest news on the app front is likely the addition of native code support, which will enable more powerful applications as well as ease the porting of code from programs initially developed for iOS or Android

In terms of data management a highlighted feature by Belfiore is called DataSmart, a new data management system that will keep track of your downloaded data usage. This is achieved by the phone automatically connecting to Wi-Fi when in range.

Overall, it seems that the above changes are designed either to make the Windows Phone 8 run parallel with other platforms or make it more similar to Windows 8 for desktop. Either way, Microsoft is catching up.

Vodacom’s objective in creating its Developer Programme is to partner and collaborate with the South African developer community and give them the opportunity to actively participate in the service provider’s applications development and gain maximum access to consumers enabling the link between the two.

Once registered, the programme will provide the developer community with technical and commercial support, including training, workshops and innovation incentives. The local developers will have access to distribute their apps to South Africa’s largest mobile network customer base as well as their partners’ international presence . The exposure to international markets aims to increase the revenue potential for the developers through advertising and in the future, app sales revenue shares. It encourages local developers to develop new apps that are relevant to the South African market as well as the global environment.

Developers will receive commercial support with the placement of the app in the ‘featured’ section of the app store, a competitive revenue model, marketing support and app monetisation support. Further technical support will include training workshops, device lab support, onsite coaching, tools for app creation and mentoring for local startups.

Following the implementation of its Developer Programme, Vodacom Digital Media has also launched a competition in which developers are challenged to create the Coolest New App of the Month whereby one developer will be rewarded every month for achieving the Most Downloaded App.

For more info on the Vodacom Developer Programme and the competition click here. 

Sony Corp’s newly appointed CEO, Kazuo Hirai is promising to forge a new path for a company that once dominated the business of “filling free time with the creation of wildly popular consumer products” including Walkman music players and PlayStation game consoles.

The selection of the 51-year old Hirai on Wednesday marks the end of the leadership of Howard Stringer who as a British national was selected in 2005 as the first non-Japanese CEO of Sony. During his seven year reign, Stringer was unable to turn around Sony’s deteriorating electronics business. The leadership change has come at a critical moment with the combination of its market share being squeezed by the manufacturing accomplishments of Samsung Electronics Co., the unstoppable innovation and success of Apple Inc. and the steep ascent of the yen, which rose 30% against the dollar during Mr. Stringer’s time which hindered profit goals. Clearly, Sony needs someone to step in and make some drastic changes and Mr Hirai claims to be the man to make it happen.

Hirai, who will take up his position as CEO in April says that he wants to cut costs and shake up the corporate structure that he currently blames for preventing product innovations and keeping Sony anchored in the past in the wake of Apple and Samsung’s product development innovations. He rose up the corporate ladder with a record of tough cuts, most notably squeezing profits out of the company’s PlayStation game division four years after it reported a $2 billion loss. “I thought turning around the PlayStation business was going to be the toughest challenge of my career, but I guess not,” Hirai told The Wall Street Journal.

Based on his success with PlayStation Hirai was promoted in April 2011 to oversee the consumer-electronics division and by November, he tackled the difficult TV business, the cornerstone of Sony’s electronics unit which having failed to embrace the liquid crystal display, continued to make losses over a seven year period. Three months ago already, before his appintment as CEO, Hirai decided to cut the sales goals of the television group by half saying that Sony would “build only what he could sell”.

Included in his strategic goals is Hirai’s determination to teach the company’s 168,000 employees that past successes in manufacturing must be replaced by selling the harder-to-quantify “user experience.” Hirai continued ”We really need to buckle down and be realistic. I don’t think everybody is on board, but I think people are coming around to the idea that if we don’t turn this around, we could be sitting in some serious trouble.” Hirai is planing to have a news conference on Thursday.

Sony debuted its Tablet S in late 2011 to solid reviews however,  the device has yet to reach significant sales.

Unilever’s offices in Switzerland are an example of what is known as ‘agile working.’ Agile working, based on the concept of ‘hot desking’, is a more expansive version of the office organization system where multiple employees share working stations in shifts. Agile working allows staff to work where and when ever they want as long as they get the job done. As you can imagine, in order to ensure that staff remain diligent, the space in which they work needs to be motivating, inspiring, varying and with ample room for productivity.

The brilliant work of award winning architectural and design firm Camenzind Evolution achieved just that. The large expansive space accomodates meeting rooms of different sizes and themes. Every area is adorned with a variety of seating styles in the working and recreational spaces including, tables and chairs, cubicles, large couches, benches and bar stools. Every space is completely different showcasing a sense of fun, innovation and creativity.

Some of the conference spaces are adorned with company brands like Ragu, Omo, or Heartbrand, while other spaces are given company mottos for inspiration.

All in the attention to detail, bright colours and boundless creativity, the Unilever offices are something to be admired and envied.

Source: Stephen Searer for Office Snapshots

Kethan Parbhoo, Equivalent Programme Lead at Microsoft South Africa said, “We funded the research to help Maxxor understand its customers even better. The results will help Maxxor prepare a roadmap for future product development.”

Maxxor, a software development company, has been developing games for the MXit platform for more than two years and they’ve entertained well in excess of one-million MXit users with at least one of their apps to date. As Adrian Frielinghaus, Head of Online Games at Maxxor, explains, “One of the things we’re asking ourselves is, ‘What apps, besides games, do MXit users want?’ We ran a survey amongst our players and received an overwhelming response – almost 30,000 people completed a 30-question survey. That must be some kind of world record for mobile research, and the results offered us some unique insights.”

As it turns out, MXit users don’t care too much for news headlines.What they do care about is hooking up, having fun, and finding out what their favourite celebrity got up to last night. Therefore in order to appeal to this unique market, MXit app developers need to continually create content that amuses, entertains and connects its users.

Perhaps the best news for mobile software developers is that MXit users don’t mind paying for apps as long as you give them exactly what they want. As Frielinghaus says, “This is precisely because MXit has spent years carefully grooming its users to buy virtual goods with virtual currency. This is made even easier by allowing them to easily convert their airtime into virtual MXit currency.”

In terms of user devices, as might be expected, MXit users mostly use Nokia and Samsung handsets but it is interesting to note that 11% of Maxxor’s MXit users own BlackBerries. This challenges some speculation that rapid BBM growth in the teen and youth market has been detrimental to the MXit platform. This is encouraging news for developers considering the iPhone and BlackBerry platforms, because MXit provides an ideal way to get an app to the front of the mass market queue. The Maxxor research explains exactly what sort of apps will prove successful.

Almost 75% of Maxxor’s surveyed users are accessing the web at least once a day on their mobile phones. In other words, the traditional MXit user is no longer trapped in a “walled garden”. Software developers need to realise that MXit is now part of a greater Internet experience for mobile phone users.

Watch the BandwidthBlog interview with MXit CEO Alan Knott-Craig.