Apple’s iPhone is just one of the many smartphones that developers are targeting for their apps, and with 11 million smartphones purchased per day, the market is ripe for the picking . Reuters
The mobile ecosystem in Kenya is growing at a tremendous rate, as evident in the sheer number of developers and creatives seeking to make a living off the technology industry.
Numerous events and initiatives have formed around this vertical and I believe it serves as a sure sign that we are not in a bubble as cynics – both within and without the tech arena– would allude.
Mobile Monday is one such initiative whose local chapter was started just over 15 months ago. It is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends. From an initial gathering of ten it has grown to attract on average 100 participants at its fora.
Over the past couple of months, Mobile Monday has been holding its meetups under the theme of “Local Developers and their Successes”. Local application developers have been given a platform to talk about their work and share the numbers.
The three part series saw a presentation by Nokia on their consumer app ideas competition that gave local developers insights into what the market was looking for, and a host of local applications.
Some of the projects highlighted were ‘Gari Noma’ by Joseph Karanja, a car theme which at the time of presenting had over 94,000 downloads worldwide, ‘Tuvitu’ a widget platform by Shimba that is edging closer to the 40,000 download mark locally and AroundMe, a social utilities application by James Mwai that has seen 150,000 downloads worldwide.
As the series came to a close on Monday the 28th, the best was saved for last. This was in the form of one Dadiaus Misiani a self-billed freelance developer, who holds a regular 8 to 5 job but develops mobile applications in his free time.
Dadiaus has developed quite a number of apps and he shared numbers of the interesting kind, that speak of the revenue generated. He started his application development journey as a publisher this year and so far has published 40 apps with both local and global audiences.
His Tour Kenya application, that offers travelers information on points of interest in Kenya and which is offered as a paid application on the Nokia Ovi Store has since the month of May generated 500 Euros just from application purchases.
On apps targeted to global audiences, the series of translators that he built have in the space of twenty five days generated 4,000 Euros from purchases. By plugging into mobile ad networks, the applications have brought in $ 2,000 over the same period.
Do the math. Are you smiling?
Mbugua is CEO of Symbiotic; Twitter - @mbuguanjihia Web – www.mbuguanjihia.com
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Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
