The message is out: Apple is already working on a folding smartphone, following other companies like Samsung which unveiled Galaxy Fold few days ago. Possibly, Apple will make a better one: the company is legendary on that. Wait for them to launch, see the reactions, and then deliver the perception demand product. It worked on smartphone, smartwatch and will work on evolving species of phones which fold. Yes, iPhone X Fold is coming but going through the patent office.

Working with Foldable News, Gilsing has demonstrated how the application of Apple’s design aesthetic on this form factor has the potential to create a truly transformative device. Most notable for many with be the laptop-style keyboard integration, something which is similar to Nokia’s popular Communicator range which had a loyal following for over 10 years.

Folding iPhone conceptWWW.FOLDABLE.NEWS

But what Samsung unveiled via Galaxy Fold has been knocked down by Huawei Mate X which has already elevated the game. Sure – it does that for extra $400 or so. I can say that iPhone X Fold will cost possibly $2,600.

Feature phones are getting smarter – and that is a good thing. Orange unveils Sanza, a smart feature phone with capabilities to do voice assistance. The device goes for $20.  In a continent where many remain largely non-literate, this is a good one. The mission: “Sanza will help overcome language and literacy challenges, as our customers can access information and applications on the device easily, just with their voice, and without having to type.”

The future of African computing will include voice which will is already emerging as an operating system platform. Anyone that wins that battle will redefine the future. Today, Google through its amalgam of efforts is leading the way. Stanza will take the message of Google to millions, powered by Orange!

Computing delivered through voice will be more appealing there over the present text-based format. For entrepreneurs with capacity to do voice, this will be highly rewarding in places like Africa.

From the press release….

At Mobile World Congress, Orange partners with KaiOS Technologies and UNISOC to launch a phone with voice recognition at $US 20 in 16 countries in Africa and the Middle-East : Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central Africa Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Jordan, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Morocco, Sierra Leone and Tunisia.

An affordable 3G smart feature phone  

Beginning April 2019, Orange customers in Mali, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire will have access to a new category of smart feature phones powered by KaiOS, the operating system from KaiOS Technologies. The other countries will follow in the year. Sanza will be commercialised with a dedicated offer (voice/text/data) starting around $US 20 (depending of the country), that will help customers to optimise their budget.

KaiOS Technologies powers an ecosystem of affordable digital products and services. Its flagship product, KaiOS, is the emerging mobile operating system for smart feature phones with more than 50 million active users in over 100 countries. Kai’s mission is to help close the digital divide by bringing mobile connectivity to the billions of people without internet in emerging markets, as well as providing those in established markets with an alternative to smartphones. KaiOS is based on HTML5 and other open web technologies. Devices running on the platform require limited memory, while still offering a rich user experience through access to apps like the Google Assistant, YouTube, Facebook, Google Maps, and Twitter.

Sanza has the simplicity of a feature phone powered by the UNISOC SC7731EF chipset platform with a long-lasting battery life up to 5 days, 3G+, Torch, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, combined with advanced smartphone-like functionalities.

Advanced functionalities for Africans 

Thanks to the Google Assistant, Sanza will help overcome language and literacy challenges, as our customers can access information and applications on the device easily, just with their voice, and without having to type. The Google Assistant understands multiple French and English accents, with more languages to come later this year. The phone menu is available in Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese, English and French.

This new phone will also give access to applications such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Search and Google Maps, as well as Orange Money, the flagship mobile-based money transfer and financial services offer and My Orange, the application to monitor your mobile consumption, among other things.

As a core subsidiary of Tsinghua Unigroup, UNISOC is a leading fabless semiconductor company committed to the independent R&D of core chipsets in mobile communications and IoT. Its products cover mobile chipset platforms supporting 2G / 3G / 4G / 5G communication standards, RF chipsets, wireless connection chipsets, security chipsets, TV chipsets, and image sensor chipsets. With more than 4,500 staff, 14 R&D centers and 8 customer support centers around the world(as of Oct 2018), UNISOC has been one of the top 3 mobile baseband chipset suppliers in the world, the largest pan-chip provider in China, and the leading 5G communications chipset design company in China.

Africa’s Voice Operating System

If you applied to become a Zenvus Loci distribution partner, our team will be reaching to you this week. You will receive a document on Zenvus Loci with Loci Mini and Loci Max versions. We continue to welcome new applications (click here if interested). Loci is an IoT device.

You must have the capacity to place a minimum of $10,000 worth of Loci order. We are a partner-driven business which means we depend on partners to sell our products while we focus on engineering and production. In our hardware business, we have no sales/marketing department (provided you remove the guy named LinkedIn who runs our Marketing!).  Also, a one-time partner fee applies.

As a distribution partner, we will share revenue on hardware as well as the associated revenue from subscription (for a limited time). But you would use your resources to invest in developing your local market. As a partner-driven company, we are looking for companies with capacity to advance our missions in territories across the continent. So, we suggest, if your scale is small, team up with others as you send your applications. We are always generous on our commissions to partners.

I look forward to signing the partner agreements on Loci with your firm.

Zenvus Loci Concept Designs As We Move Into Production

We’re Launching A New Hardware Product (Loci), Distribution Partners Wanted

The Uber’s mobility operating system has redesigned the architecture of urban transportation. The implication is that car companies of the future can be abstracted within that operating system as citizens may not necessarily care which brand of car is moving them. Yes, all you care for is to be taken safely from one location to another. BMW and Mercedes Benz see that future and the associated risks, and are investing $1.13 billion to go to battle with Uber.

“Our mobility services have developed a strong customer base and we are now taking the next strategic step. We are pooling the strength and expertise of 14 successful brands and investing more than 1 billion Euros to establish a new player in the fast-growing market for urban mobility,” said Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars. “Further cooperations with other providers, including stakes in startups and established players, are also a possible option.”

“We are creating a leading global game changer. The 60 million customers we already have today will benefit from a seamlessly integrated, sustainable ecosystem of car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal transport services. We have a clear vision: these five services will merge ever more closely to form a single mobility service portfolio with an all-electric, self-driving fleet of vehicles that charge and park autonomously and interconnect with the other modes of transport,” Harald Kruger, Management Board Chairman of BMW added.

I have long maintained using the Smiling Curve that Uber is a better car company than Ford and most car brands just as Intel or Accenture is a better computing company than Dell or Lenovo. Yes, while Dell and Lenovo remain at the center of the curve, on computing, Intel and Accenture have operated at the edges where more values reside. Similarly, Intel, Nvidia and Samsung are better car companies than GM and Ford as they are supplying modern microprocessors to power the increasingly commoditized boxes called cars.

In this video, I explain how value is shifting from the traditional car manufacturers to the companies which are “retrofitting” cars to become driver-less vehicles. When Uber and Waymo receive cars from companies like Nissan and Ford, they take them through engineering processes, turning them into driver-less cars. Systematically, the value now moves from Nissan and Ford to the final products made by Uber and Waymo (this applies even as Uber and Waymo are not selling the cars to the mass market).

Today, BMW and Mercedes Benz want to move to the edges, away from the middle of the curve to find great value. Most car companies will do just that in coming years. In short, the redesign has started as Ford and General Motors are closing or plan to close plants around the world.

Smiling Curve Shift: Value Redesign in Global Automotive Sector

To be a successful businessperson, you do not need to be as mathematical as Chike Obi or grammatical as Wole Soyinka. All you need is awareness and observation on market frictions, finding solutions to them, and rapping up in a matching story. If you can get those three in sync, you will experience glory.

Three things, as I explained here, and in a Harvard Business Review piece:

• In the age of slow dot matrix printing, HP named its printer LaserJet. It became a category-king.
• When AMD was challenging Intel on microprocessors because all processors were hidden inside computer casings, Intel unveiled Intel Inside, stimulating the interests of the public to specifically ask for computers powered by Intel. Intel took over to the cleaners.
• Microsoft is legendary for Windows. But the biggest innovation was not the necessarily the technology but the pricing model.

Simply, besides technology, there are many other things (“latent forces”) which are required in other to win in markets.

So, today, we have the largest retail chain in the world, Walmart, selling what most have discarded in villages across Africa, as a premium product in America. Yes, chewing stick is organic with no chemicals, and a box goes for $15 in America. I can tell you that organic products in U.S. are typically expensive. Next time, ask that auntie to send you organic toothbrush from U.S.: you will get your logo’d chewing stick!

Beyond Technology In African Startups, “Latent Factors” For Success