Kenya's biggest mobile provider plans to open a mobile applications store by the middle of this year, as it attempts to increase the discoverability of local apps and further position the company to take advantage of the country's growing data sector.
Safaricom's director of corporate relations, Nzioka Waita, said at the Mobile Web East Africa event late last week that the company hoped to have its store up and running by June, with the focus on developing apps for Google's Android smartphone platform.
The move also represents an effort on behalf of the company to attempt to profit on the growth of the data sector in the East African country.
Recent statistics from the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) said mobile Internet subscriptions rose from 4.1 million to 5.3 million in the last quarter. Mobile Internet subscriptions make up 99% of total Internet subscriptions in the country, according to the CCK. The CCK has also said last year that Safaricom has a 69.9% share of Kenya's mobile telecommunications market.
“It is integral to our future,” said Waita. “We will continue to play the long game, because when voice is dead, data will keep us in business.”
It is not the company's first move into the data sector. Safaricom has already partnered with Strathmore University to open the Safaricom Academy, which trains mobile apps developers on Android development and has already produced one set of graduates.
Moses Kemibaro, sector expert and sales director at InMobi, said: “In a nutshell, Safaricom is going as far as training the next generation of mobile application developers to 'feed' its data business.”
Kemibaro also noted Safaricom has made a smart move by favouring the Android platform, as research company Gartner said the Google system accounted for 52.5% of smartphone sales globally in 2011.
Safaricom has also already released an Android model from the Chinese maker Huawei called Ideos, which became the cheapest smartphone on the Kenyan market. Waita further said Android had assisted the arrival and affordability of smartphones in the Kenyan market.
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