On the 21st of November, we will be having Mbugua Njihia talking about “How to sell your app”. Check out his presentation at Demo Pit and get some few pointers:

So here below are the top 12 submitted apps that will have the chance to pitch in front of the professional jury and win a nomination to the Mobile Premier Awards 2012, which are held during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona:

CrowdPesa.com

Hewa

Empathy

3GINNOVATORS

NikoHapa Mobile App

iRelief

MEDKenya

WordPower

MsemaKweli

M-Shop

Symptom Tracker

Personal Nutritionist

Congratulations to all the App Artists that got selected!

The jury that will evaluate the apps on stage include:

1. Leonard D’cunha- Manager, Portfolio, Planning & Insights – East & Southern, Nokia.
2. Dr. Joseph Sevilla- Deputy Vice Chancellor (Quality and Assurance) Strathmore University
3. Maria langat- Operations at Akirachix and Software Engineer at Bridge International Academies
4. Alex Anderson- Lead Developer FrontlineSMS and also works on medical education website podmedics.com
5. Idd Salim- IT Expert.Coder at Symbiotic media and Xema labs. Blogger at IddSalim.

Venue Information:

The location will be at the *iHub_Nairobi’s Innovation Hub for the technology community at the 4th floor of the Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong Rd., directly opposite the Uchumi Hyper.

Date: 10th of September 2011

AGENDA

10.00am: Welcome and introductions

10.15am: First Act – Leading Platforms present

10.30am: 2nd Act – 10 Apps present with jury feedback
11.30am: Thanks and jury selection for Runnerup plus the winner.
11.40am: Networking and Winner announcement.

12.00am: Close

The m:Lab’s training on mobile applications development and related technologies is delivered through a short course program. The training program is designed to offer individuals who already have a software development background an opportunity to hone their skills with a mobile technologies focus. It is a program targeted at the thousands of graduates of ICT related degree programs from East African universities.

The training is undertaken at m:lab East Africa’s new facilities located at Bishop Magua Centre on Ngong road – one floor beneath iHub. The training facility has capacity for 25 students equipped with computers and high speed Internet connections. The Lab’s testing facility equipped with a wide range of mobile devices from various manufacturers is also accessible to the students.

Technologies covered in the training include USSD, android, J2me, php, mysql, LWUIT, Mobile Web , IVR, User Experience Design, SMS, Systems Design. Students also get to cover training on business for mobile. This is meant to improve their entrepreneurial skills and is complemented by short business incubation period before they graduate. The Lab expects that although some students may complete the course and go into relevant employment positions others will go into entrepreneurship with mobile innovations.

The current program is a full time daily course on all week days. The students get to interact with other developers and domain experts from different development sectors through events organized by m:lab East Africa and the iHub community.

Eligibility criteria

1. Must have completed a degree program (evidence = final year transcript or degree certificate)
2. Must be available on a full time basis from 9.30am to 3.30pm for 4 months (between September 5th 2011 and December 31st 2011 for second wave of students)

Number of Students

A new lot of 25 students is expected to join the training in September 2011.

Evaluation and Selection Criteria
The selection panel for submitted applications will consider the following criteria

1. Familiarity with technology, platforms and programming languages
2. Accomplishments
3. Demonstrated interest and motivation
4. Academic background and performance

Here comes AppCircus in Kenya.. iHub Nairobi will host the travelling showcase of the most creative and innovative apps on the 10th of September.

10 developers can pitch in front of an international jury, formed by industry experts.The winner of the AppCircus will get an opportunity to be nominated for the Mobile Premier Awards 2012, which are held during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The deadline to participate is the 22th of August!

Here are the rules for participation:

• Submissions and presentations to the AppCircus are FREE and open to any developer, Startup or company.
• Applicants must send one representative person to present the app live on stage.
• Apps are submitted through the appcircus.com platform.
• Registration and membership on appcircus are FREE!
• appcircus.com members need to add the app to their profile before applying to an AppCircus.
• Each App can only present in one AppCircus, except if it receives a Runnerup Waiver.
• One app in each AppCircus will be nominated for the pool of apps from which the 20 finalists for the Mobile Premier Awards 2012 will be selected.
• The app with most votes after the nomination winner, will receive a “Runnerup Waiver”, which allows it to apply again to be selected at another AppCircus.

The project aims at rewarding ventures using technology for development purposes. The African Social Venture Prize will reward three projects or enterprises addressing needs of the ‘bottom of pyramid’ market in Africa through technology.

The digital projects range from e-health and mobile banking to digital and mobile applications for education or agriculture. They therefore represent huge opportunities for social development.

Prizes

The 3 winners will receive a financial grant (25K€, 15K€, 10K€) and they will also benefit from a 6-month mentoring by management experts.

How do I enter?

Any entrepreneur or any legal entity that has been in existence for fewer than two years at the time of the contest may participate at no cost and with no restriction on nationality.

Submitted projects must be designed to be deployed in at least one of the African countries in which Orange operates and must offer technology in an innovative way to help improve the living conditions of the populations.

The African countries of Orange’s footprint are Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, Uganda, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Botswana.

Applications are accepted from June 8 to September 15, 2011 at www.starafrica.com.

You hear a lot of m-this and m-that, and sometime we wonder can we get another name for these mobile apps.  Mobile apps are great and it is encouraging that Kenya is among the top apps producing nation in the world.. can you believe it. Yeah we are that good. The only question always in my mind is how many of these apps are geared towards making money?

In the last few months Mobile Monday management decided to allow the guys with local apps to come forward and showcase their fine creations. True to the word many developers came forward and they did not disappoint.  Excellent apps with downloads running into thousands and hundred of thousands. The only problem is people don’t eat downloads. That might come out badly but we came to realize that, it might be true when a guy whom i can’t even remember his name came in and presented his tours and travel app on the ovistore and blow everyone off with the amount of money he is making from the people downloading his app. The different between this unknown guy’s downloads and the other more popular downloads is that he is charging for every download made. I would rather have only 100 dowanloads with people paying Ksh.10 rather than have 100k dowanloads with people paying nothing.

Most of the time I think that with the  free downloaded app, the end game is to have some rich company or investors to buy out the developer after sometime. For that to happen the app has to be very popular, and i mean very popular.If you can’t get it to that high level then put some amount on your app, for heaven sake. make even a cent after a year. Better.

Why are the local apps not geared towards mcommerce?

Yes the answer to that at the moment is beyond my paygrade, but i will throw that question back to you, yes you reader.  Mobile commerce (aka “m-commerce”) refers to consumers shopping through mobile payment system. The most popular in Kenya is Mpesa followed by Airtel money and others like yuCash and orange Money.  In the last few days i have been constantly looking for an m-commerce app. This is not about a website with ecommerce function and transacted through Mpesa or mobile payment system. No, i have been looking  for a version of a company’s webpage that is designed to fit within the constraints of a cell phone. We call them apps, so i will stick to that. Where are they?

Something is not adding up. Although Mobile Money payment has provided widely available electronic network and payment mechanism in Kenya, mcommerce  in its true sense is yet to take off in a big way. Popular companies like Dealfish still can’t make money online, and still wondering what to do next.   I know people will talk about  paying bills, such us electricity bill to Kenyapower but  my experience with that is not that good. If your electricity is going to be cut today and you pay via Mpesa, believe me it will be cut because it takes two days before that transaction is reflected on the system.  For that, you better walk there and pay for the electricity in cash. Now compare that with when i want to buy domains through credit card and it takes only a click of button and the speed of the internet and i have the domain purchased.

Now we all know that one of the biggest  hindrance to mcommerce in Kenya is Safaricom or Vodafone or whoever is in charge there. The exact point is their refusal to come up with Mpesa API. Again i don’t understand why the Safaricom guys are not giving this a serious thought but i believe that on top of revolutionizing mcommerce in Kenya and beyond, this could be one great cash cow for them.  Yes, i know about those Mpesa APIs you have read about around but don’t believe any of them unless they can prove that they can access Safaricom or Vodafone server. And the true API for Mpesa will definitely come from Safaricom or Vodafone. …..Dear Bob Collymore if you ever read this,give us your thoughts on this as i believe it is a matter of National importance. …sssssshhhh.

That aside why are the developers not using the other network if Safaricom is so rigid to accept change which actually will internally help them? Big mystery. I find most companies in Kenya very funny, most of them are not willing to take risks and be the first ones to try and test something. Whenever you take something new to them, the first question you get is who else is using  it. Damn it people, why can’t you be the first one to you use it!!!!!!!!!

Competition and competition ..I love competition. Nokia announced last week  “Create for Millions” a global competition that brings consumers and developers together to create applications for Nokia’s Series 40 mobile phones. A million Euro prize money is in store here, Kenyan developers take note..

In this competition, developers are invited to submit Java and web apps for Nokia Series 40 phones in four categories:

• In the Know – News and locally relevant information apps
• Fun & Games - Games and entertainment apps
• Emotional Closeness – Social networking apps
• Access to Knowledge – Life improvement apps, for example education or health

For each of the four contest categories listed above, there will be 10 cash prizes, with a top prize of 50,000 Euros in each category. Top apps in each category win a variety of non-cash prizes such as user experience reviews and app marketing assistance.   In addition, special prizes will be awarded to apps that showcase the best touch feature in an app, the best location-aware app and the best overall Series 40 web app.

Regional versions of this global developer competition with additional prizes will be announced soon.

Consumers are not left behind on this.

Nokia’s Create for Millions challenges consumers to submit their best ideas for the applications they’d like to see on Nokia Series 40 mobile phones. Authors of the winning entries may see their ideas come to life in person at Nokia World later this year and can meet the developers who created them. In addition to a free expenses-paid trip to Nokia World, winning consumer’s can play with their new app on the latest Nokia Series 40 phone given during Nokia World.

Consumers are encouraged to submit ideas in one of three categories: health & education; social networking & location; and games & infotainment. Additionally, consumers can vote on entries and comment or collaborate on ideas already submitted.

This post originally appeared on Kachwanya.com

Kenya is a developing country, yes I know you know that but how fast are we doing that. In terms of the mobile phone subscriptions and internet use, our growth is amazing.   Kenya recorded 12 per cent mobile subscription from 22.3 million recorded in the previous quarter by CCK to 24.96 million Subscribers in the second quarter of 2010-11. We are talking here about the period starting in the beginning of October 2010 to the end of December 2010… That is the highest growth that has been recorded in four years according to CCK.

Looking at that in terms of Kenyan mobile phone penetration you get some interesting percentage. Kenyan population according to 2009 census was recorded at 38.6 million people. The population growth rate is estimated at 2.69% per annum.  From that time to end of December 2010 of course some people died, while others were born. Using the above figures, approximately the population of Kenya at the end of December 2010 was around 40 million. Back to the interesting part, 24.96 million mobile phone subscribers of a population of 40 million people. That is mobile phone penetration rate of 62.4 per cent.  That was my calculation but here is the official lines from CCK

As illustrated in figure 4, mobile penetration has been growing steadily over the quarters. At the end of the quarter being reported, the penetration of mobile service reached 63.2 per 100 inhabitants from 55.9 per 100 inhabitants in the last quarter

Figure 4 : Source:  CCK, operators compliance return forms

Think about it, majority of Kenyan population is made up of kids under 15 years old.  With that probably it is safe to say that every living Kenyan adult now has a mobile phone and the next growth is upto the kids. Before we get carried away, there is the issue of some people having at least two sim cards and I am not sure whether CCK took time to check the duplication aspect.

Winners and losers

In terms of market share the clear winners were OrangeKenya and Airtel Networks. Orange gained 4.5 percentage points of the market share while Airtel Network gained 1.7 percent.  The irony is while Airtel locked horns  with Safaricom fighting for the market share, the surprise winner in that was Orange Kenya.  Telkom Orange registered the highest number during the quarter under review with 972,928 new subscriptions followed by Airtel with 814,708

In the losing end Safaricom lost 6.0 percentage points of market share. Safaricom registered 736,777 new subscribers in its network between October and December 2010.  Essar Telcom aka Yu lost 0.3 percent as they added only 125,868 new subscribers to its network.

As it stand now Safaricom has 69.9 percent of market share, followed by Airtel 15.2 Percent while Orange Kenya has 8.5 percent. Last but as they say not least Yu has 6.4 percent market share.

Oooh and there is the dying breed called fixed lines. The fixed lines declined by 0.8 per cent from 228,391 to 226,587 lines in contrast to the fixed wireless which recorded a 8.9 per cent increase from 141,580 in the previous period to 154,161 during the period under review. By the way who still use fixed lines? Offices, but still when you look around you will realize that it is now acceptable to just list mobile phone as the official telephone line of the company. At the same time the talk of a company being a briefcase died sometime back with the coming of cloud computing. With mobile phone and internet people now build companies without having an office and even without knowing each other physically within the same company. Currently I am doing a number of projects with people living in different parts of the world and the progress on those projects is unbelievable.

A total of 7.45 billion minutes of local calls were made on the mobile networks against 6.63 billion in the previous quarter, representing 12.3 per cent increase. Traffic from other mobile networks to own networks increased significantly during the period under review from 405 million minutes in the previous quarter to 688 million minutes during the quarter under review. This is attributable to the declined off-net tariffs across the networks following the review of the interconnection rate  of 2010.  Waw..Kenyans are talking to each other.

But something happened to the love of smsing. The number of SMS recorded during the quarterwas 665 million text messages compared to 740 million text messages sent the previousquarter. It is the same time many people were talking about how it is expensive to send sms compared to actual calling. Since then Safaricom which was the subject of that discussion reviewed the cost of sending sms in their network, bringing it down to Ksh.1 from Ksh.2.5. When given a choice of call someone or sms at the same rates, people would prefer calling directly.  Unless ni mtu wa deni…..

Internet Use

The total number of internet subscriptions increased to 4.7 million by end of December 2010 from  3.2 million in the previous quarter, that ended in September 2010. The number of internet users was estimated at 10.2 million from 8.6 million users in the previous quarter.

This represents 18.6 percentage growth.  As always this is my favorite part although I am still at lost what Kenyans do online. Majority of them are facebooking, twittering and Googling but what else? That else part might be the most important part for Kenyan developers and entrepreneurs. Find out…

Bandwidth

The international internet connectivity bandwidth recorded marginal decline from 20,384.12Mbps in the previous quarter to 20,209.56Mbps during the quarter under review.  Talking of the bandwidth, last month we had a rude shock when KDN showed up to disconnect our offices internet connection because of over use. Too much uploading and downloading you know. We had to fight tooth and nail for them to return it with the promise of “we will not over upload and download again”.. smh.

Letters

Holy crap people are still sending letters. In the postal services, the number of total letters sent decreased to 31.2 million from 31.6 million representing 1.4 per cent decrease. The number is still in terms of millions waaaw. I just remembered the AGMs are called using letters..when will the emails be enough for this surely. And yeah my friends at HELP still look for defaulters using letters too.  Jokes aside Kenyan Post office should have transformed itself to local email sending client like Gmail and Yahoo mail. I remember my friend John Karanja of Whive.com once developed platform for sending emails which he cheekily called Postkenya.com. He presented it Posta but they rejected it without much consideration..call it living in stone age..