A Perspective on Location Services, Mobile Entrepreneurship & Startup Life

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.