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Pivot25 Kenya Begins June 14 – $75,000 At Stake

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Tekedia Editors
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Courtesy of mlab –  an incubator and testing facility for mobile application and services companies. Pivot25 is an mlab initiative to bring focus on the Mobile developer and entrepreneur community in East Africa.

 

On June 14th and 15th, 25 of East Africa’s top mobile start-ups will be pitching their ideas to an audience of around 500 people.

 

Where? At Pivot 25, an event organized by mLab East Africa.

 

The event will give visibility to some very interesting projects from Uganda, Tanzania, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda or Kenya. Entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas and have the possibility to win prizes. Not only, they will raise a lot of awareness around their project: the audience, the judges, the blog/media coverage will help spread the word of the brilliant ideas that will be presented.

 

The Event will not only showcase developer talent in the region but also bring focus to the mLab and the role that it plays in the mobile application development ecosystem in East Africa. Our goal is to make this truly inclusive, bringing together start-ups, manufacturers, businesses and operators from every country in East Africa: the mLab is accessible to anyone in any of these countries, and Pivot 25 is as well.

 

How to get involved?

There are few ways to get involved with Pivot 25.

  • Enter your startup – the best way to get involved, if you have ideas, knowledge and passion for mobile services. If you make it to the event, the awareness will be huge and the prizes big.
  • Sponsor the event – there are already some great sponsors supporting Pivot25, but a few more places are available. Join us to help raise awareness of the potential of mobile services, coming from East African start-ups.
  • Register to attend – we expect tickets to sell quickly, so get yours now before they’re all gone.

 

Why compete?

Prize Money – Compete for over $75,000 worth of Cash Prizes

DEMO – The Overall Winner of Pivot25 will have the opportunity to present at Demo – The Launchpad for Emerging Technology in Silicon Valley. A Value of over $18,000.

Smart-phones – Winners and participants that are selected in the top 25 will walk away with the latest Smart-phones

Launch your Product – You can use this opportunity to Launch your Application to the Mobile Fraternity

Pitch your Application – This is a great opportunity to pitch your application to Operators, Angels and Venture Capitalists

Demopit – Showcase your application in the Demopit. The Demopit will be a designated area for all Companies that are participating in the Competition. This will give you an ideal opportunity to network and demonstrate your applications.

Kenyan RHoK3 Begins June 4 – Assembly of Global Hacker Community

By
Tekedia Editors
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RHoK brings the ever-­growing global hacker community together with experts in climate change and disaster risk management to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK hackathon event draws on the talents and initiative of the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to respond to real-­world problems with solutions that can have an immediate impact on the ground.

 

 

How does it work?

RHoK organizes hackathons—intensive hacking competitions events with multiple global locations bringing together developers from all over the world to hack on real-­world problems. At every RHoK hackathon, the problem definitions are shared with the RHoK community, and the developers work their hacking magic to create open source software solutions that respond to those problems, make the world a safer place and save lives.

 

Date: June 4-5

 

Venue: iHub

Upper Hill Estate, 4th Floor, Bishop Magua Centre George Padmore Lane

Ugandan Mobile Player BlueCube is #1 Sports Content Provider to Telcos in the Country. Delivers Bible, Jokes, News And Other Contents 24/7

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Tekedia Editors
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BlueCube is a mobility player in Uganda and and has been operational since early 2007.  They focus on  delivery of mobile content, partnering with Mobile Telecom companies, to deliver a range of services for entertainment, utilities, marketing, education, etc. It was recently ranked the #1 content service provider for sports in Uganda on MTN, UTL, WARID and AIRTEL.  Running off our short code 8777 across the networks, it is the preferred source of News, Sports, Jokes, Bible, Forex and lots of other info on the phone both in English and Luganda updated hourly. 24-7.

 

COMPANY ROOTS

The proprietors of BlueCube have a robust history in VAS provision with over 8 years experience in the development and promotion of mobile value-added services. It’s against this background that BlueCube was formed to bring these strengths and competences to further entrench mobile phone usage and increase the ARPU for the benefit of our partners and us.

 

OUR VISION

To become a regional and global leader, delivering high quality, affordable and cutting-edge mobile services and establish high profile relationships with Telecom Companies, clients and mobile subscribers in Uganda and beyond.

 

OUR REGIONAL SCOPE

BlueCube has a presence in neighbouring countries Rwanda and Tanzania. Our goal is to move beyond East Africa and export all the good we have learned to other parts of the world while bringing home experiences from abroad.

 

TECHNOLOGY

 

At BlueCube, we make heavy use of Open Source software and promote the adoption of open standards.

 

OUR BRAND

Benefits

  1. Responsiveness – we’ve made sure our customers and partners receive responses and query resolution within minutes of logging queries; and for cases where conditions have not permitted, within 24 hours at worst.
  2. Flexible – we use homegrown solutions and change our products on a regular basis based on customer feedback.
  3. Reliable – we have taken great pains to ensure high availability of our services.
  4. Customer focused – we provide phone, email, and toll-free SMS support consistent with our corporate objectives
  5. Cost effective – BlueCube was the first company to propose and implement toll-free messaging as a way for customers subscribing & unsubscribing for our service,  bridging a very important gap in service delivery

 

OUR PARTNERS

  1. CBS Akaboozi
  2. Uganda Performers Rights Society
  3. MTN Uganda
  4. AIRTEL
  5. Warid Telecom
  6. Uganda Telecom

Ernst & Young 2011 Africa Attractiveness Survey Is Out. Verdict? “It’s time for Africa”

By
Tekedia Editors
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1

The accounting giant recently released its annual Africa Attractiveness survey for 2011. These are the key points from the survey, from Ernst & Young.

 

1 Africa is becoming increasingly attractive to international investors. Perceptions are becoming more distinctly positive over the longer-term horizon; in fact, the only emerging region that is clearly ahead of Africa in terms of investor perception is Asia.

 

2 Business leaders are planning new developments and expanding existing ones, demonstrating why Africa’s share of new global FDI projects has steadily improved over the past decade. Looking forward, capital investments are set to grow, reaching a forecasted US$150b in 2015.

 

3 Africans themselves are leading the growth in investment across the continent, and display an overwhelming optimism about the growth prospects and investment potential of the continent. This optimism and self-belief is underlined by a 21% compound growth rate in Africans investing in other African countries from 2003 to 2010 (and in a diverse range of sectors).

 

4 Our survey of international business leaders threw up an interesting difference between developed and emerging market investors, with emerging market investors generally more positive about Africa’s attractiveness.

 

5 Capital investment from emerging market investors grew particularly strongly (at 13% CAGR between 2003 and 2010), with high concentration in the extractive and manufacturing sectors.

 

6 While investors from developed markets are relatively more cautious about Africa, they still represent the largest proportional investment, and are investing in a diverse range of sectors beyond resources.

 

7 A key difference appears to be that emerging market investors regard Africa as critical to sustaining their own growth, whereas developed market investors see it as a potential future market that still needs to develop. In reality, both views represent only part of the total picture.

Microsoft Acquisition of Skype – The Key is Marketing in Mobile Ecosystem

By
Ejiofor Agada
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1

The fact that Microsoft has acquired worldwide leaders in the VOIP scene Skype is no longer news. What is news however, are the chances of Microsoft making marketing headway with Skype in the mobile platform, especially through its mobile strategic partner Nokia.

According to industry analysts, it is not clear what kind of impact the software giant Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype could have, for instance on the fortunes of Microsoft’s new partner Nokia. Microsoft Corporation announced recently that it has acquired Skype, the company behind the software application that allows users to make VOIP calls and chats over the Internet, for EUR 5.9 billion.

 

In February, Microsoft and Nokia announced that they were to enter into a major strategic partnership agreement, under which Nokia would start to use Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system as its primary platform in smartphones.

 

In a recent report issued by International Data Corporation (IDC), senior research analyst Rosalind Craven estimated that the deep integration of Skype software into the Windows phone operating system would be a ”major selling point” for Nokia’s upcoming smartphones.  Skype’s current client software can already now be downloaded to mobile phones based on Android, iPhone OS, and Nokia’s own Symbian platforms.

 

According to Craven, Microsoft could nevertheless wish to include in the Windows Phone version for example special features which would not be available for any other systems. When integrating Skype technology into its Windows Phone software, Microsoft could actually give its new handsets an attractive edge that could be used to compete against the Internet features provided by iPhone and Android-based mobile phones.

 

However, Craven warns that there is a downside: some operators could take a negative attitude towards the use of Skype becoming more common on mobile phones. Operators, even in developing markets like Nigeria, are not overly fond of Skype, as using the Internet phone company’s software and services allows consumers to make free or very cheap calls, taking money out of the operator’s pockets.

 

Controlling the existing phone networks, operators exercise power over mobile handset markets as well. In many countries, operators are selling a major part of all handhelds in bundled deals with a mobile connection thrown in. Research company Morningstar’s analyst Sunit Gogia estimated that it will require some effort from Microsoft to turn the Skype deal into a money-spinner.

 

 

There’s no question that Microsoft snapping up Skype is as big as corporate deals get, and even though both companies have interests across a wide spectrum of consumer technologies, the deal is particularly significant for the mobile space. On the most basic level, it obviously means getting a Skype app up and running on Windows Phone 7 will now surely be a higher priority than before.

 

As things stood, however, the app was expected out in Q3, so it probably wouldn’t have affected Nokia’s Windows Phone handsets anyway, which are only expected to appear after that. And with Skype used by 170 million people worldwide, Microsoft would be foolish to rock the boat and start favouring one platform over another. In fact, Microsoft boss Steve Ballmer has already said directly that “we will continue to invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms”.

 

But all the same, we have to agree that this move can only work out well for Nokia and its forthcoming Windows Phone 7 handsets. With Qualcomm and Nokia working together on the hardware and Skype and Microsoft on the software side all pulling in the same direction, it surely adds up to a serious recipe for smartphone success – or as My Nokia Blog puts it, “that’s NOT a juggernaut to mess with”.

 

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