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Nigerian Developers, Android Is Now Set With Starcomms Launch of Huawei IDEOS C8150 Android Phone

By
Tekedia Editors
-
1

 

 

Guardian reports that Starcomms has introduced Huawei IDEOS C8150 Android  Phone.

 

STARCOMMS Plc, the leading CDMA operator in the country, has introduced Huawei IDEOS C8150 Android phones into Nigeria market in order to meet the cravings of its teeming customers.

 

Huawei C8150 is a smart mobile phone that allows a customer to apply voice and data services on its network such as calls, web access, application download, e-books and information search on the web for exciting places at the touch of the button.

 

The phone features Google Android 2.2 and it is supported on EVDO Rev A network with pre-loaded Google applications.

 

Presenting the new hand set, the Chief Operating Officer of Starcomms Plc, Logan Pather, said: “Android has continued to maintain its position as the most innovative smart phone operating system in the telecomm world. Starcomms has a culture of applying cutting edge technology for the benefit of our customers. That is why we will continue to give them value for their money.”

 

He also said: “C8150 phone is a mobile phone with full touch screen. The Android 2.2 OS supports push mail on its platform and suitable for mobile entrepreneurs and business executives who need to stay connected with clients, business partners and also have access to vital information on the go.

 

Now, this gets very interesting. Android is evolving to become the tablet and phone of choice globally and Nigeria will not be an exception. What has to happen is that the nation will move forward in the developer community with the launch of IDEO. It means there will be more devices for the market.

 

As Starcomms has started it, watch out for more networks to bring smartphones that are enabled by Android. It is just a start and before you know it, Android will rule the land. Of course, Blackberry must not be discounted especially with the purchase of Scoreloop – a German gaming company. That can turn out to be a change changer.

Tekedia Mid-2011 Award for Public Commentary on ICT Goes To ATCON

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

Tekedia mid-year Award for public commentary on information and telecommunication sector  goes to Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON). Though their website is down or maybe they have moved it and we do not know the new one, we are impressed on the eloquence, presence and quality of the President of this body. He is very analytical, poised, factual and insightful in his statements. He is simply a technocrat with no elements of politicking.  It is refreshing to see a leader who honors his nation through service and yet boldly states what needs to happen for progress. For that, we recognize ATCON with

 

Tekedia Mid- 2011 Award for Public Commentary on Information and Telecommunication Sector

 

About ATCON

The Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) is a professional, non-profit umbrella organisation of all telecommunication companies in Nigeria.

Inaugurated on December 10, 1993 as a national trade organisation, ATCON has its membership drawn from Nigerian and multi-national companies which provide telecommunications and information technology products and services in Nigeria.

Mission Statement

To serve as the voice of all telecommunications companies in Nigeria and to contribute to the growth of telecommunications in Nigeria and thereby enhance the growth of our national economy resulting in better living conditions for our people

Objectives

 

  • To serve as an umbrella organisation for companies which provide telecommunication products and services in Nigeria for the purpose of enhancing a viable environment for good business and orderly practices.
  • To project the views of the Association on subjects of interest and concern to its members and to influence and shape public policies for the real development of the Nigeria telecommunications industry.
  • To protect the interest of members without necessarily jeopardising those of users and consumers of telecommunication services in Nigeria.
  • To serve as a clearing house for the attestation of companies which meet acceptable standards of business practices in telecommunications.
  • To promote human resource development by way of providing executive training in telecommunications and informatics to the personnel of members.
  • To organise exhibitions, seminars, conferences and workshops which popularise the availability of members’ services and those which are available in the international community to the users and consumers of telecommunications in Nigeria.
  • To develop strategies and encourage innovations and technological advancements that will facilitate accelerated growth and rapid expansion of the Nigeria telecommunications sector.
  • To provide information about members of the Association, the services they offer, the strength of their organisations, and other information which may promote the growth of their business within and outside Nigeria.
  • To engage in activities which can generate funds for the Association provided that such activities do not constitute direct competition with those of its members.

 

 

 

The Tech Bubble Is Brooding – Tekedia Intelligence Predicts 2014 For It To Happen

By
Tekedia Editors
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1

 

Tekedia Intelligence has concluded its study on the triggers and enablers of tech bubble. Our data shows that the industry is headed for a bubble.  But it will take three years for it to mature. There will not be any tech bubble until after 2014 especially in the United States.

 

Last few weeks, we reported that the industry is healthy because the big players are choosing well. They are investing in very healthy and strong companies and jacking up the valuations of those companies. In that report, we quoted the Economist thus:

 

But trouble may be brewing out of sight: although 80% of publicly-listed tech companies are trading within their historical valuation ranges and recent IPOs are few in number, valuations in the private market are skyrocketing too. There is a lot of hype surrounding the upcoming IPOs of high-profile Internet companies such as Facebook (which is valued at around US$76bn, more than Boeing or Ford), Zynga, a virtual gaming company valued at around US$9bn, and Groupon, which sells online coupons to its subscribers and is valued at around US$15bn-20bn. By contrast, Twitter, a highly popular social-networking site also tipped for an IPO in the near future, is valued at around US$7.7bn, although it has yet to find a profitable business model.

 

Immediately, we commissioned our own study using our economists who looked at some numbers in the US. We looked at the recent data available in AOL Tech Crunchbase. In other words, we wanted to know what people were raising in new startups.  Our data is surprising. Raising funds have become easier even for the smallest and simplest idea in Silicon Valley.

 

A start-up company called Color – that makes apps so that people can share photos without logging in got
$41 million. The product was so bad that the bad comments exceeded the good ones. Yes, investors are looking for the next Facebook and why not spread money around? They are putting money in any idea that flies across them. This is a very bad sign in making. More on Color later today as we have a post on it.

 

The arrival of LinkedIn in the stock exchange was a wake up sign in the tech world. It traded in the three digits before it cooled. That euphoria was a sign of non-fact based exuberance and that is a sign of bubble. Pandora is holding up since it launched, but Tekedia things those companies are not receiving good analytical valuations. They are over priced because they trade many multiples than their revenues. Though Skype got billions more than its 2010 revenue, Microsoft is such a healthy beast for us to worry. The investors are those that will crack the market and not the behemoths like Microsoft.

 

So, these are our numbers which do not look good and some happenings in the industry:

  • The Russian Yandex raised $1.3 b at its IPO. This is a search engine for Russia and it leads the market there. But recall that Russia is a risky place to do business because of government controls. Yet, investors hoping to catch the next Google put that money

-U.S. is now the place for foreign companies to raise tech funds.  In U.S., they like technology. Contrast with Nigeria where all tech companies lag the market. Chams is a junk stock, the same goes for Omatek and many other technology firms in the Nigerian Stock Exchange.

  • In 2010 U.S. exchange, aggregating all the IPOs, 32% were American companies, China provided 21%, UK 9% and Germany 6%.

 

The valuations are beyond reason for some. Most of these companies have no revenue model. The  numbers we picked from some legacy companies in the Second Market confirms our fears.

 

SecondMarket is an SEC-regulated alternative trading system, registered broker dealer and member of FINRA, MSRB and SIPC. SecondMarket has brought significant market structure to these asset classes, and in the process, improved liquidity for sellers and enhanced opportunities for investors.

 

The numbers in SecondMarket is troubling. People are hedging their fortune on the likes of Facebook, Zynga,etc without caution. Yet, these ones are healthy and will survive the crash. The worries are the small fringes that receive millions.

 

Of course, there are still good deals in the market. Blackberry acquisition of Scoreloop is a good one. Scoreloop is a German gaming company. Price was not disclosed but insiders noted that it was tens of millions for a company with no major revenue.

 

The complete report, :The Tech Bubble Is Brooding, from Tekedia will be released when we finish the formatting in PDF. It will come as a PDF document and available free on our site. But remember that in 1998, the ramp up to the Tech Bubble , we had 19% of all IPOs to be tech and 17% foreign. Today, it is 32% and 39% foreign. Either Americans are not creating enough companies to go public or that people have figured that American tech investors are not getting the valuations rights, we will help you answer those questions.

 

This is Tekedia – we have a foundation of having won a 2010 “Book of the Year” when our founder edited a groundbreaking book that shaped the future narratives of nanotechnology and microelectronics. We have that tradition and you will like this report on tech bubble.

Averting The Dangers Ahead – Preventing Food Crises in Africa Through Technology And Regulations

By
Tekedia Editors
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0

In a recent study by the London based non-profit, Oxfam, focusing on food supply around the world in the future, it noted that we are not addressing the food supply sustainability model very well. Oxfam said that the world is “sleepwalking” as it relates to food.

 

Rising food prices could escalate tensions around different regions of the world.  The Arab Spring was precipitated among other factors by food shortage and its prices. Oxfam in a paper titled, “Growing a Better Future” noted that prices of staples may rise up to 120% -180% of their present costs by 2030.

 

The key contributing factors are climate change, population, market price speculations, poor distribution channels and we add, lack of technology for preservation of food. Tekedia thinks that lack of technology to preserve harvested produce in Africa is a major concern for all policy  makers.

 

Oxfam concludes that this trend can be revered if government enforces the right regulations, especially in the commodity market where Wall Street speculates the prices out of reckless abandon, and addresses the problems of the small farmers. One of those will surely include helping them to preserve their produce better by coming up with better tools and technologies that will make it affordable and not relying on electricity which they do not readily have.

 

Without any intervention, about 239 Africans will be affected even as prices of maize, rice , wheat and other produce rise in some cases by three digit percentages. For example, while accounting for the impact of climate change while destroys the land nutrients, maize can see its price go up by at much as 126% in the next two decades.

 

You can read the full report by vsiting Oxfam website.

 

Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working together in 98 countries and with partners and allies around the world to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.

 

We work directly with communities and we seek to influence the powerful to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them.

 

OEM PC Vendors, Zinox and Omatek, Need Intervention To Survive

By
Tekedia Editors
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1

This completes the report we started before.

In the 2011 Nigerian Information Technology Exhibition (NITEX), it was very obvious that Nigeria has talents and businessmen and women that can execute at any level.

NITEX is the premier event for software developers, software architects, solution providers, OEMs, IT vendors etc. NITEX-2011 will serve as an excellent opportunity to promote latest technologies as they relate to organizations, ranging from SME’s, large enterprise and multinationals.

NITEX offered a window on what the challenges are in the nation. The PC industry in the nation has grown as more people continue to buy. Analysts have reported that the developing world will sustain the global PC growth despite the erosion of the market coming from tablets. In East Africa, the PC market is expected to grow by 75% largely due to Kenya.

In this midst, it looks very good because the industry is expanding. However, the local players in Nigeria are not smiling. Increasingly, the PC industry in Nigeria has turned to be a dumping ground. There are many international brands as we open our doors to electronics. And many people are going for cheaper products which in most cases seem affordable than even the local ones.

The government has written the policy to help the locally made products  but enforcing it is different from making it. It is not just computers, but software. Tekedia thinks that the only people that will save the industry is simply the government. The local OEMs have lost the public and it is going to be tough to get it back. They have to innovate in price and service to have a chance. Of course their scales are too small to compete with the behemoths like HP, Dell and Lenovo in the PC industry.

Tekedia thinks we must give credit to the local players for pushing and competing in a challenging environment like Nigeria. It is commendable that Zinox and Omatek have done well as they did. What they have to do now is to lobby government better to enforce the “Buy Nigeria” directive made in 2006 by the government in the software and hardware industry. SystemSpec the software company seems to be doing well as it is monopolizing many software contracts from the government.

A small history of the industry shows that though many started this business, only Zinox and Omatek are left behind. There are others, but their share is too small.  We recall the era of NEAT Computers in Port Harcourt, Brian Systems, Balogtek, among others. Right now, Zinox and Omatek with some other little brands are riding the waves. And they are having tough times.

Our data shows that if the government does not help the local OEM vendors in Nigeria, they will exit the stage for the foreign ones by 2017. Together, they are losing market share in the range of 5-7% annually. Zinox used to dominate up to 70% of the educational PC sector, that has come down to less than 50%. Obasanjo helped these companies as he promoted them, showed up in photos and we hope they will get help from the present admin which also has shown genuine interest in supporting local vendors in other areas. A good example is the Innoson Motors which the administration has visited and commended in many ways. Anything short, we will all be buying foreign.

 

—end–

 

 

 

 

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