The People’s Blackberry

Posted by Staff Writer on Monday, January 19, 2009 at 12:26am.

Africa is made up of mostly low-income to lower middle class income individuals and most people own low-end mobile handsets. So when we see new technology innovations that specifically target low income individuals, we like to tell the world about it. So, it was good to hear of a value added service that is usually priced for corporate and wealthy customers being introduced into African markets by an Indian company. Mobee, an Indian mobile application developer is teaming up with mobile operators in Africa and providing less costly solution to mobile email access. Using this application, individuals will now be able to access email services on their phones without using internet connectivity.

“Mobee is an email2SMS service based on the push-mail concept similar to that used on BlackBerries. It enables one to send and receive emails on a mobile phone via SMS without any internet connection,” said Symon Ndirangu, CEO of Information Convergence Technologies (ICT Kenya).

Push mail works by keeping an active connection open between the mobile device and the server that will notifies the mobile device as soon as a new email has arrived, allowing users to read mail as it arrives in real time on their phone.

Research In Motion, the manufacturer of BlackBerry, the specialised devices that allow consumers to access their email using a hand-held device has enjoyed commercial success as the concept becomes increasingly popular with small to large businesses around the world.

Both Safaricom and Zain launched their version of the service, allowing Kenyans to access push email from around Sh2,000 a month.

Mobee’s affiliates in Africa are working to enable low-end mobile phones - those that do not have the internet capability necessary for push email services - to access a similar product. Most offer the service initially for free, so users can make an informed decision on weather it works for their purposes.

Mobee provides ongoing technical expertise while affiliates are responsible for marketing and getting mobile providers on board to support the project.

The mutual benefit partnership is based on revenue share.

There are currently 20 million Blackberry subscribers around the world.
It will be interesting to see how this does in Africa, and weather it can compete if mobile operators decide they want to offer the same service for their lower income clients. If they do consider it a value added feature with acceptable returns on investment, they may just overshadow the smaller mobee service. It will be interesting to see how this and other mobile value added products survive in these competitive markets.

Osterman Research, an industry trend watchdog, estimates the uptake of push email services by corporate workers will increase to include half the workforce by 2010.