A free cell phone library a free SMS service have caught the attention of South Africans
There are more cell phone subscribers in South Africa than there are inhabitants. While only 10 percent (about five million out of about 50 million South Africans) have a computer with internet access, 70 percent personally own at least one cell phone. Many have more than one contract (hence the high percentage of subscribers). In contrast with computer usage, which is mostly limited to the wealthier sector of the population, cell phones are used in all social strata, crossing the social divides.
According to some estimates, there are approximately 10 to 12 million WAP-enabled cell phone users. That number is set to grow, for South Africans are prepared to make financial sacrifices in order to acquire a higher-end device. Cell phone handsets and accessories are consistently among the top selling products on South African eBay, bidorbuy.co.za.
With such pervasiveness of the cell phone technology, it is no wonder that two recent home-grown innovations have captured the imagination of South Africans.
The first is a cell phone reader. Launched in August 2010 as a brain-child of the Shuttleworth Foundation, this innovative service, named Yoza, is a free library of cell phone stories, also known as mobile novels (m-novels). Yoza m-novels followed the success of the Foundation’s m4Lit (mobiles for literacy) project, which resulted in two short stories being read more than 34,000 times on cell phones.
The representatives of the Foundation say that, for the foreseeable future, the cell phone, not the Kindle or iPad, will be the e-reader for Africa. Understandably so: practically everyone has a cell phone anyway, while acquiring an alternative e-reader entails additional expense.
Yoza primarily targets teens in order to encourage them to read and to write. Yoza is now looking to grow the library of stories as well as a community of young users who not only read the stories but participate in the commenting, reviewing and writing of them, thus turning reading into a social, sharing experience.
Yoza is available on www.yoza.mobi and can be accessed through an internet connected PC and through all WAP-enabled cell phones.
While Yoza is a community benefit driven service, another cell phone product that is attracting attention wants to generate profit. It is a new free SMS service called FSMS.
Free SMS services are not a big novelty. There are several operating in the country, offering the registered users the ability to send free SMS messages from their computer to a cell phone number, to any network in South Africa. However, some are strictly for contributing members, like the one offered by the social site Blueworld.
Others yet let the users send SMS messages for free – but then ask the recipient to pay.
FSMS says that its registered users can both send and receive SMSs throughout South Africa for free, on any of the cell phone networks covering the country. This seems to be just what people want, and within a few months since its inception in June 2010 FSMS had users subscribing at the rate of 150 per day.
The number of free SMSs anyone can send via FSMS is limited to 20 a day. To use the service, computer users can go through a standard web interface, and cell phone users through a WAP site. This month (October 2010) FSMS is launching their tailor-made cell phone application.
FSMS representatives say that they want to create an African messaging service – for Africans, by Africans, moving beyond the borders of South Africa to provide their free service to the rest of Africa. FSMS plans to monetise the service when the number of subscribers reaches about 20,000. That is expected to happen by the end of October 2010. The company believes that this number gives them a sound platform for launching advertising that would finance the service and provide profit.
It remains to be seen how users will react to being served advertising messages, which are as a rule more intrusive on cell phones than on a computer based email service – among other things, because no cell phone has a junk mail folder whose content can be deleted with one click of a finger.
