Its no more news in Nigeria that more people in accessing the Internet in Nigeria do so via mobile terminals, majorly mobile phones. Statistics according to International Telecommunication Union states that a whooping 44 million people out of the over 160 million Nigerian population do so. The 44 million is only a fraction of mobile phone users in Nigeria basically being only the smartphone users.
In an attempt to make its services avialable at low cost, Google will now be relying on text messaging, popularly known as SMS, to break into one of Africa’s largest booming economy. This service also run in parallel in countries like Ghana and Kenya. The service enables mobile phone uses to access e-mail via traditional GSM text messaging.
Amongst most other challenges with doing business in Nigeria as well as low cost availability of service and devices, Google has resolved to not allowing revenue loss from its customers (email customers) who can’t afford a computer or smart phones. In words of Affiong Osuchukwu, Google’s Nigeria marketing manager: “We don’t want to just come in and start looking for how to generate profit. We consider Sub-Saharan Africa to be an investment region. We know we have to invest resources and time to develop the market in order for the market to become valuable to us in a way that we can do business“.
Google’s most recent push came in July as the company began advertising its text message e-mail service, which allows users to receive their e-mails through Gmail for free as text messages. Users also can reply to the e-mails for only the cost of sending a text message. They also can access local classified ads hosted by Google.
This service is already being advertised on buses and billboards in Lagos but statistics are yet to be seen as to how viable this project is. Howvever Google is convinced that by getting this service avialable to the simplest handset, Google would be progressing on a road-map of of making low income earners have as much social capital as the high income earner and at the same time Google making a profit.
[image via flickr/soldierant]
