Building digital products with simple feature phones in mind | Hacker News Reader

Building digital products with simple feature phones in mind

medium.com

37 pointsbriodf9 comments

Tomi Ahonen has written at length about SMS vs other channels, http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2015/06/mobile-...

  DIGITAL REACH IN 2015 OF ALL HUMANS ALIVE (7.2B PEOPLE)

  iPhone . . . . . . . . . .  300 million download iPhone apps (4% of humans)
  Tablets (any OS) . . . . .  600 million owners (8% of humans)
  Whatsapp . . . . . .  . . . 900 million active users (12% of humans)

  Facebook on mobile . . . .  1,200 million (1.2 B) mobile users (17% of humans)
  Skype . . . . . . . . .. .  1,200 million (1.2 B) on any tech (17% of humans)
  Android . . . . . . . . . . 1,300 million (1.3 B) download Android apps (18% of humans)
  Facebook (all tech) . . . . 1,400 million (1.4 B) active users (19% of humans)

  PCs (all types) . . .  . .  1,500 million (1.5 B) in use (21% of humans)
  eMail on mobile . . . . . . 2,200 million (2.2 B) active users (31% of humans)
  Mobile internet . . . . . . 2,200 million (2.2 B) active users (31% of humans)
  eMail on any tech . . . . . 2,500 million (2.5 B) active users (35% of humans)

  Internet on any tech . . .  3,000 million (3.0 B) active users (42% of humans)

  SMS text messaging . . .  . 5,400 million active users (75% of humans)

  Table by TomiAhonen Consulting, June 2015, data collected from multiple public sources 2014-2015.

We implemented the first USSD bitcoin wallet in Kenya a couple of years ago.

USSD as a technology is good, but the biggest problem is access to the networks. If you think its hard dealing with App Stores you haven't tried dealing with MTOs.

In some countries you can deploy it nationwide, but in many in particular developing countries you need to make deals with every single MTO.

If they think you are competing with one of their services such as Mobile Money they will not let you on their network. In many other cases you will need to have a physical server in their server room.

Do this bitcoin wallet in Kenya still work?

That's a useful insight. It's also worth noting that if you do that, you've also given your product an API. Programs can easily manipulate such interfaces.

Brilliant observation! My brain was fumbling in that direction but hadn't arrived at API before seeing your comment. Toying thoughts on this and API best practices in one's head at same time might lead to good ideas.

Another thing that popped into mind is that this looks just like a mainframe terminal application. Just smaller. Anyone who could design them (i.e. interfaces) well should be able to design these well. Maybe.

I didn't even know USSD existed. It solves some problems, esp cost, that I was worried about in some use cases. The simplistic interface shouldn't be a problem. Bookmarking this.

> I didn't even know USSD existed.

Same here, I only learned about it recently because I work with pay-as-you-go solutions for 3rd world countries.

BTW: If anyone here has something to share about mobile payments I'd be happy to know, post it or contact me. Details are in my profile : )

Edit: words, contact info

If you haven't, I would recommend you look into m-Pesa. In some countries (not all countries), M-Pesa uses USSD (like Tanzania I think).

Overall, some of the solutions for payments and banking being implemented in some developing countries is quite different than what most people in the west are used to. M-Pesa is one of them, but in countries like India, online wallets are starting to gain traction too.

Most people in developing countries don't have credit cards, let alone being comfortable using them online. So a lot of people in India still use the 'Cash on Delivery' model, which isn't very much prevelant in the west, and other solutions like 'Netbanking' (in which the shopping site redirects you to your bank provider's site, you log in, and through the bank provider's site you do the payment, and then it redirects to the shopping site's payment confirmation page ; In other words, you haven't used a card, you've just paid directly through the bank) are also there.

this is an ad in disguise

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