Over 50% of Nigeria's web traffic is from mobile phones
quirksmode.org
quirksmode.org
I run a Nigerian news site here but most of our traffic is from Nigeria, we get about 1500 uniques a day, only 200-300 of them will be from the web, all the rest is mobile. I finally went and pulled up our site on opera mini using Opera's emulator and was shocked to find that our ads do not appear on those handsets ... so all our revenue is coming from 200-300 people each day.
Analytics is a lovely thing.
Just a thought: Are tablets considered mobile in this context? Because that is where I see major growth potential)
Are people using mobile in Nigeria because they don't have a laptop? Will they be using their Raspberry Pi in a couple of years? Or is the UK behind in the adoption of using mobile internet? I guess it's a bit of both.
I don't think most Nigerian mobile users will have access to a HDMI-capable TV within the next couple of years, so the Raspberry isn't the way.
The appealing thing about mobile phones in Africa is that they are physically small: they're reasonably easy to import (legally or otherwise) and can be carried on your person, so they are less susceptible to theft. Large electronics like notebooks and TVs don't have these advantages, and so they are only accessible to the small middle class that can afford them and have a secured house in which to keep them.
Raspberry Pi also has RCA and stereo output, so could quite easily connect to a any standard TV with scart socket.
In Nigeria, it's different. If some company invests in installing new infrastructure like copper or fiber, it gets stolen. This also happens in the UK and the US, but to a far lesser degree, and the damages are typically covered by insurance. No insurance company is crazy enough to insure infrastructure investments in Nigeria due to the very high probability that all the expensive wires, fibers and equipment will be stolen and sold for scrap.
It's not just communications infrastructure, the problem of theft also occurs with power infrastructure. Nearly every country has a problem with theft of valuable copper power lines, but in many parts of Africa, the problem is a lot worse. In Nigeria, it results in an unreliable power grid so running computers which are not battery backed (UPS backed systems or battery powered laptop/tablet/phone) is a dodgy proposition.
As for why infrastructure theft occurs everywhere, blame greed. As for why it happens more often in some places, the answer is economic disparity. Just imagine how tempting it would be to steal wires where you live if you knew those wires were made of gold. Considering the difference between your earning potential at a job, and the earning potential of jobs for people in other places, gold power lines is roughly equivalent.
You see, all the rules change when you have to worry about crazy, desperate thieves cutting down live power lines in your neighborhood.
The other side is, of course, adoption rates and government regulations. Japan is an excellent example of high adoption rates propelling mobile data networks, and sane governance enabling advancements.
For more stats and figures from their Networking Index Forecast, check out http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/...
1. A friend or family member in the U.S. wants to send $50 to someone in the village. The friend buys a $50 prepaid minutes card and transfers the minutes to the cell phone in the village.
2. The cell phone owner in the village checks his minutes, sees that he now has $50 worth of minutes and gives $50 to the person the minutes were for, minus his fee.
It's amazing how ingenious people can be when you let them.
I have personally phished 3 email accounts from scammers in the past couple of years (and shut them down) and they were all Nigerian.
Many say they are from the UK, China, Indonesia, but IP addresses don't lie. Neither does the money trail.