‘Techpreneurs’ find niche in development of phone software

Brian Ambajah, Head of Marketing and Business Development Turnkey Africa said the firm was now focusing on developing smaller, more tactical solutions.

“These extend the functionality of existing applications and provide for new distribution channels and growth opportunities for software development,” said Mr Ambajah.

At government level, the ICT Board of Kenya is currently formulating a plan that will see it create an IT services division.

This plan hopes to formalise the software industry and create a new revenue centre that the country can leverage to increase its earnings from the services sector.

Larger share

Services are contributing to a larger share of the country’s GDP, achieving a 29.5 per cent jump in growth contribution to GDP last year, up from 15.5 per cent five years ago
Globally, the success of Apple’s App Store has not only established the salability of mobile applications, but has also shown that the best of these offer the potential to generate enormous revenues.

Gartner states that by 2013, more than 21.6 billion apps will be sold for a total of $29.5 billion.

“As smartphones grow in popularity and application stores become the focus for several players in the value chain, more consumers will experiment with application downloads,” Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner.

“Games remain the number one application, and mobile shopping, social networking, utilities and productivity tools continue to grow and attract increasing amounts of money,” said Ms Baghdassarian.