Digesting the Opera Mobile Web Report

Opera recently released the monthly Mobile web report showing the ten (10) most active Opera Mini countries. 

In November, the top-ten Opera Mini countries, counted in number of unique monthly users were India, Indonesia, Russia, Nigeria, China, Brazil, South Africa, Bangladesh, Mexico and Vietnam




The browsing habits of Opera Mini users in Nigeria showed an allegiance to local social media site such as nairaland.com; news sites such as vanguard, punch, information nigeria.

Opera Mini is continually growing in popularity due to its speed and data compression even in low speed data networks; hence its safe to say every Nigerian mobile web user has an Opera mini browser

For the full report, click here

Is BBM ready for the Messaging War?

It's an open secret that Blackberry have decided to offer their BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) on Android and IOS platforms, and was scheduled to be launched in the summer. Unfortunately, the anticipation of BBM fans have been worn by the inability of RIM to meet up with the scheduled launch date, though there are reports that BBM for iOS and Android devices is due within days. 

With their seeming inability to meet up with he launch date and expectations of many fans, I seem to wonder if they're ready for the competitive world messaging apps. While Blackberry are still busy with BBM beta testing, their rivals have been their major rivals have been improving their apps.

Whatsapp have added new features such as ability to send multiple multimedia files (e.g up to 10 pictures) at the same time, this is not available on the current BBM, which only allows you to send one picture at a time. They also launched the Voice feature for sending voice messages which is similar but not as sophisticated as the already available BBM Voice.(Note: Whatsapp has over 300m users)

WeChat is another major player in the messaging world with over 300 million users primarily in Asia and has been re-branded for the international market. WeChat has similar features with Whatsapp but the Shake feature on their app is real cool.

Viber is another strong player in the messaging world with over 200 million users and offers texting, voice and video calls on mobiles and now on PCs. 

You'll agree with me that BBM with just about 55 million users have a lot of catching up to do, and further delays in the launch will not help their quest to be the No. 1 Messaging App. Also the current BBM features are pretty much basic and can be provided by almost any of the apps mentioned above. Blackberry needs to give the BBM app a 'Waoh factor' to enable it standout.

Only time will tell if BBM's move into the competitive world of messaging apps was worth it.

Samsung: Android's Major Threat?

Android is the world's most popular mobile operating system; 75% of all smartphones sold in Q1 2013 were Android. From humble beginning in 2008, Android worked its way to the top, supported by phone manufacturers who wanted a stake in the then Nokia/Apple dominated market. Android is an open-source software stack with permissive licensing which allows the software to be freely modified and distributed by device manufacturers, carriers and developers. 

Samsung has benefited the most from the success of Android, as its sales figures and profits have increased enormously over the years. The successful launch of the Galaxy S4 is an indicator that it's a major player in the handset market and the undisputed "King of Android". But it's not certain how long this fruitful union will last. There are indications that both parties are getting wary of the other.

Samsung always aimed to stand out from other Android device manufacturers by trying to create a Samsung experience, with the introduction of Samsung apps blended with Android releases for specific features on their devices. Now, they've taken it a step further by introducing apps such as the S-Voice and S-Translator in its flagship Galaxy series which can be viewed as alternatives to the Google apps. 

Not only that, Samsung announced a campaign in February that promises developers, 100% of revenue from software sold in its store. This is a massive effort to encourage the development of apps specifically for Samsung phones. It's evident Samsung have a plan of a future without Android and are simply getting all they need from Android; waiting for the perfect time to move on.

Google on the other hand are wary of this threat to Android and had hoped to use Motorola (which it acquired in 2011), as its joker, but this has not paid off yet. It has been slow to get the production lines busy again, though there are rumours of a Google inspired X phone from Motorola, meant to rival the iPhone and Galaxy S series phones.


Android and Samsung have come a long way together, thumping Apple to second best and causing a stir in the mobile world. However, things are not the way it used to be and their relationship can be summed up by the line " Keep you friends close but your enemies closer".

App of the Week: My Data Manager, Onavo Extend and Onavo Count

Its no news that Smartphones are 'data hungry' devices and this insatiable appetite is even getting larger with the variety of apps being rolled out.
This week I would like to introduce a three apps that are very useful in monitoring as well as managing your data usage on Android and Apple IOS powered devices.

My Data Manager from Mobidia (Android and IOS)

This allows you to monitor your data usage on an application basis (over Mobile, WiFi and Roaming) as well as give data usages in hourly, daily, monthly and also Data plan views. Another nice feature about this app is that it tries to predict your monthly data usage and advises if the subscriber data plan will be sufficient.
Here are some snapshots on my Android device.

 

Here are some snapshots on an Apple device.

 Onavo Extend and Count (Android and IOS)

This app is really "da BOMB". Onavo Extend (Android) sets up a cache of commonly accessed content there by saving data. It also compresses the data sent toward the internet also saving more data. You now see why its the BOMB.  Some of the features are

• Alerts and warnings: Receive status notifications about apps that are hogging your data, when approaching your data cap, or when traveling (data roaming). Onavo Count for Android will even predict when you will reach your monthly cap. 
• Data hog blocking: Restrict specific apps to WiFi, or block your 3G data altogether once you exceed your data cap to avoid any additional costs.
•  Advice. Get tailored tips on best value data plans from your carrier or other carriers, based on your actual usage.
• Crowdsourcing. Join the Onavo Android Community to tap into the collective wisdom of Android users everywhere.
• Simple setup. Get going in seconds: Set your monthly cap, bill cycle and cost - and you’re good to go! 

Here are some of the snapshots on my Android device after 1 day of minimal data usage.

  

These apps are available on Google Play and Apple Store.

N.B, The Onavo Extend (Android) is affects data hungry applications and activities such as tethering

Any questions or clarifications regarding the use of these apps are welcome.

The Smartphone Revolution

Last year saw a record of  over 600 million smartphones out of about 1.6 billion phones shipped worldwide in what many see as a "Smartphone Revolution". Smartphones are getting more popular by the minute.

Android was the No. 1 smartphone operating system with 68.4% of the global smartphone market, followed by Apple's IOS and others (like Blackberry OS, Symbiam and Linux) and its increasing the gap.

 Android is up 13%, iOS down 7%, BlackBerry down 81% … and Windows Phone up a massive 52%. Android is now the favourite smartphone operating system. As a result of its affiliation with Android, Samsung has seen its phone sales soar and had 25% of mobile phone shipments in 2012. Other manufacturers of  Android based smartphones such as LG, HTC, Sony and Huawei also experienced growth in sales figures. Apple's IOS is now experiencing the the heat of competition from Android (Samsung) as its lost ground in its key markets in China and US due to the success of the Samsung Galaxy S3.
This battle for more market share will continue through 2013 global smartphone installed base is expected to grow by 33% this year and double in size by 2016. With projections that smartphones will be twice the number of feature phones coupled with its market share of 60%, its no wonder why mobile phone manufacturer have been busy trying to woe customers with ad campaigns geared towards improving sales and market share.

 Nigeria is surely not left out of this revolution, for example, Nigeria is the largest market for Blackberry in Africa as we speak and this speaks volumes of our own Smartphone Revolution.
Countries with major installed smartphone bases include China, United States, Germany, Nigeria, India, Brazil and Russia (Courtesy: StrategyAnalytic). The Nigerian market is the tenth largest in the world in terms of mobile subscribers and I can modestly estimate that 1 in every 8 mobile subscribers uses a smartphone in Nigeria, and this would translate to about two (2) million smartphone users. With the introduction of many low price Android phones into the Nigerian market by Huawei, Samsung and others, these numbers can only go higher.
Smartphones have come to stay and are now part of our everyday life and as more people embrace it in Nigeria, a whole lot of opportunities abound.

What are these opportunities?you might ask, I'll be discussing them in the concluding part of this article next week.