A Perspective on Location Services, Mobile Entrepreneurship & Startup Life

Services like YouTube and Facebook are distracted by there primary markets. They don’t have the time, the resources, the know how or the local context needed to figure out what works in a country like Uganda. This creates new opportunities for local entrepreneurs with bright ideas. People who can appreciate local circumstances and innovate the business models that make the difference.

[Source: ICT 4 Entrepreneurship] [via: Le Web Mobile]

Why do I blog this? I am more and more convinced that the Web is already fragmented and that this trend will continue, we have no idea what is happening in the Chinese Web and in Africa new solutions will shape their independent Web, too.

Nathan said some truly remarkable things about mobile phone adoption in Africa:

• Majority of mobile phone subscribers today, live in the developing world
• The developing world is where we are seeing a lot of the innovation
• Africa, is the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world
• Kenya has some mobile phone services that are many years beyond what we have right now
• Day labor in many parts of Nairobi is organized via sms
• Now 30% of Rwandan’s buy their electricity using their mobile phone

[via Dale Zak: Mobile Phones, Crowdsourcing & Africa]

Why do I blog this?

Where does the innovation in the mobile market comes from? The talk gives many insights about the differences in African markets. His examples from states like Kenya or Rwanda show that new kinds of applications are required for a mobile usage behavior that’s very different from the industrialized world.

Interesting talk, session-based SMS have been completely new for me.