Mobile media in the South African landscape
27 Nov 2009 
3 Comments
Andy October’s MobileMonkey newsletter covers the mobile media industry in South Africa and Africa, within a global context, and I was recently asked to contribute some thoughts on mobile media in the South African landscape.
Read the full article on MobileMonkey here: http://www.mobimonkey.co.za/issue/27nov09
For archiving’s sake, here’s a copy of the article:
According to AdMob’s Mobile Metrics for September 2009, 89.2% of handsets in South Africa are capable of downloading video clips and 70.4% are able to support streaming video. In January 2008, these numbers were at 79.1% and 48% respectively. This is decent growth and isn’t too surprising, given that handset technology is constantly progressing, but it does go to show that the take-up of the more capable handsets in SA is strong, and confirms that a solid majority of users have the ability to enjoy a multimedia experience on their phones, if they so choose.
Putting this into a global context, SA’s 89.2% of download-capable handsets beats the worldwide AdMob average of 75%. And, when it comes to streaming, the global average of 63.7% also falls short of South Africa’s 70.4%. Again, not a huge surprise, considering that mobile is the primary interface to the internet for the vast majority of users throughout Africa.
And although we’re just talking about video here, video is the hero of mobile media sharing and the catalyst in turning an unassuming phone into a full-on entertainment centre. The idea of having full-performance video in your pocket at any time is exciting. Photos and audio (music or ringtones) are really part of the handset furniture at this point, but video entertains in the multi-dimensional way that TV always has – and, for those among the millions of mobile users in SA who’ve never owned a TV, this is big. Really big.
So what are they choosing to watch, and how do we influence what they choose? The thing is that the mobile phone has skipped a generation when it comes to content delivery. Where TV has historically pushed out linear programming that is broadcast according to the channel’s preferred timeline, the future of TV is clearly about giving viewers the choice to watch what they want when they want: on demand.
And while TV and ad executives are buzzing about what this will mean for the small screen in our living rooms, the mobile phone (along with computers, gaming consoles and other connected devices) is already an on-demand tool. It is perfect in the mobile environment, because users only ever have to pay for exactly what they want to see. That means that the influence the content owners and distributors have on users is no longer centred on them being captive.
It’s now about facilitating, creating and delivering content that has value to those watching, and letting your potential audience know that you have something worth their attention – and their airtime.
And that’s just in one direction – from you to them. But in a world where it’s all about sharing, the mobile phone now also opens up a whole new world of content from exponentially more people, where an otherwise internet-less mass of users have a combined computer-camera-modem with them wherever they go.
At Zoopy, everything uploaded to the site (video, photo and audio) by our users is automatically converted into a number of formats, including mobile formats for viewing on our mobisite (http://m.zoopy.com) and java app (http://m.zoopy.com/start). When it comes to video specifically, we offer three different sizes for the user to choose from, as well as streaming and MP4 options. This includes our Zoopy TV content, which is created by our content teams across a number of shows that range from news and movie reviews to entertainment and fashion.
When it comes to the future of mobile media sharing, the big divide is fast becoming less about handsets and more about connection speed. Though it’s obvious that phone capabilities are improving, many users in many African countries are still stuck on GPRS, never mind 3G – and don’t even mention 4G. But, thanks to the global awareness of its booming penetration and potential, mobile is being pushed up everyone’s priority list, and the future is going to be one exciting place to be, wherever you are.
Of course video has a big future on mobile but just to be pedantic it should be noted that admob of course only includes phones with wap browsers and there are still at least 50% of phones out there in SA that don’t even have this so “89.2% of handsets in South Africa are capable of downloading video clips” is not a correct statement. It will be interesting
Hey Rob, thanks for the comment.
AdMob stats are only representative, which is why I started the article with ‘According to AdMob’s Mobile Metrics for September 2009′. Everything that then follows in terms of statistics should be read in that context. It also allows for interesting comparisons between stats from different AdMob-tracked regions, as you would’ve seen from the article.
I think zoopy is awesome,it makes bloging accessable .The people at zoopy.com are part of the revollution in media dialogy and giving the many undergroung subcultures a platform to put it out there, if you know what i mean, if you dont then you dont……you’ll find me on zoopy.com