Phone makers strengthen engagement with local app developers to boost revenue

Foreign and local mobile phone manufacturers are stepping up engagement with the local applications development community to harness Nigeria’s pool of talent in order to create locally relevant digital content that would drive adoption of devices and consequently boost revenue.
With the Nigerian mobile applications market currently valued at about $1 billion, phone manufacturers are increasingly interested in establishing direct ties with local app developers as battle for marketshare heats up, according to industry observers.
The country’s mobile phone market is expected to grow to $5.7 billion by the end of the year, according to African global market research agency, GfK.
BusinessDay further gathered that phone manufacturers in Nigeria are currently working aggressively with software incubation centres in Lagos, and technology accelerators to unearth innovative technology start-ups.
According to industry observers, these start-ups will be tasked with piloting and scaling new services through strategic projects addressing market needs in industry verticals such as education, financial services, healthcare, retail, transportation and hospitality.
“Startups…are developing innovative applications that can add value to end-users in West Africa and promote the adoptions of Samsung products, solutions and services,” said Charles Ojei, director, enterprise business for Samsung Electronic West Africa (SEWA).
Only recently, the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) and Samsung, entered into partnership in a bid to provide more opportunities, resources and tools to West African (WA) entrepreneurs.
MEST trains, invests and incubates aspiring African software entrepreneurs, putting them on the path to become globally successful technology entrepreneurs.
Samsung will be involved from the early stages, starting with company ideation and pitching processes during the MEST training portion and will support MEST by providing in-kind as well as subsidised devices and tablets that can be used to test out and further develop their solutions.
Other phone makers such as Nokia, Apple, Blackberry, Huawei, Google, Microsoft Devices are all planning to further strengthen ties with app development community this year.
This, according to industry analysts, are all geared towards galvanising local talent to innovate and create content in order to meet the growing demands of smartphone users.
BusinessDay also learnt that some phone makers are already taking up minority stakes in some viable digital start-ups.
Chukwuemeka Afigbo, programmes manager at Google, sub-Saharan Africa, said the developer space in Nigeria has grown in leaps in the last five years.
“The web thrives on content: websites, mobile apps as well as a variety of services that enable content creators and service providers like entertainers, bloggers, online newspapers, e-commerce companies, banks and so on get their content and services across to the end user. Software developers play a big role in designing and building the services and platforms that make this possible”, Afigbo explained.