Africa is the largest consumer of the British Broadcasting Corporation`s (BBC`s) WAP-based content.
"Africa continues to be the BBC`s largest consumer of our WAP-based content, especially Nigeria," says Geoff Lynn, BBC`s mobile product manager.
According to BBC statistics, 61% of its international WAP users come from Nigeria, 19% from SA and 7% from Uganda. He notes that the UK makes up 20% of the corporation`s WAP market, accounting for 1.2 million consumers per month.
Lynn notes that the high percentage of WAP consumers from Africa shows the importance that WAP-based content holds in Africa.
"We don`t have actual numbers, but we can translate Nigeria`s 61% WAP usage to 10 million Web page requests in 2006."
He says Africa is the world`s largest-growing mobile phone market, with unreliable landline telecoms encouraging the growth. Information via cellphones is one of the few ways that Africans can access news.
Most mobile phones in the region do not support xhtml/html, which allows people to browse full Web sites, says Lynn. The WAP site, however, is built specially for devices with limited screen space, memory and bandwidth, and so is perfect for mobile phones in Africa and other developing nations.
"The WAP version of our Web site gives users access to just the 'bare bones` so you get just the headlines, story text and small images if your phone supports images," says Lynn.
The BBC also cuts the longer stories into chunks so users only get four paragraphs at a time to save on cost.
According to the BBC, other countries accounting for its 58 million WAP page views last year were Jamaica (7%), Singapore (4%) and Israel (2%).
Lynn says the BBC does not charge for access at the "point of use" of the service, so there is no need to have a credit card, which makes it fairly accessible to all users. He notes that the BBC has the scope to do revenue share deals with mobile operators outside the UK, so commercial models may start appearing.
Share