Vodacom gave the public a sneak preview of Office Anywhere, its soon-to-be-launched mobile data service, at a breakfast where it shared a stage with MTN yesterday.
The service will include "more than just synchronising office productivity applications" with smart mobile devices, said Chris Ross, Vodacom sales, product and services director, at the breakfast, co-hosted by Accenture and the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Illovo, Johannesburg.
Ross declined to give much further detail, but said the service will deliver mobile business applications and content from its ecosystem of partners. "We just provide the pipe."
Data acceptance slow
"Data currently makes up less than 5% of our total mobile revenue, and consists mainly of SMS," said Sifiso Dabengwa, MD of MTN. Vodacom put its data portion at 3% of revenue.
Dabengwa explained that convincing users to use data services, such as mobile enterprise applications and content services "beyond just SMS", will require a concerted effort on the part of everyone involved in the ecosystem.
Data is critical for the sustained growth of the two operators, having already reached a degree of maturity in the voice market and showing declining income in real terms, after inflation. They also have to increase average revenue per user, with Cell C now sharing the pie. Both networks said data is an immense growth opportunity and focus.
How they plan to do it
"You have to segment the market into business and consumer portions," said Dabengwa, referring to consumer-centric content such as ringtones, games and online betting, and more business-focused content such as share information, and business apps surrounding the area of sales force enablement, including customer relationship management, fleet management and inventory systems. "We also need to have the right devices available, and they must feature a high degree of usability."
Dabengwa added that operators have to encourage partners to develop applications and content, as they have a huge potential market to tap. "Relating to this, billing services and revenue sharing models need to be looked at carefully."
As far as the user is concerned, pricing is important, with the equal and opposite imperative for networks to increase margins. "In the rest of Africa, margins are higher, because subsidies to meet roll-out targets, and hence, penetration, are lower. Here, from an investor point of view, we have to increase our stake."
Issues such as handset incompatibilities have further bedevilled consumer acceptance of multimedia messaging service, meaning standard devices, quality control and incentives to development partners are required.