Recap of MoMoNigeria September 2012 Event

The Mobile Monday Event is an initiative of Mobile Monday (http://www.mobilemonday.net) that is organized in over 100 countries around the world. The event aims to bring together developers, visionaries and observers in the Mobile Technology (not limited only to Mobile Phones) sector.

Mobile Monday Nigeria aims to do the same in Nigeria through the monthly meetups organized every last Monday of every month at a venue that is communicated via Email and social media channels  (MoMo Nigeria on Facebook, MoMo Nigeria on Twitter). 

The September edition of the #momonigeria event started with Adeyemi Fowe (Nokia and Mobile Monday Nigeria) giving an overview of Mobile Monday. He explained what the vision of Mobile Monday is and the role it plays in the technology ecosystem in Nigeria. He highlighted that Mobile Monday tries to create a platform that encourages networking within the ecosystem which will in turn help people to collaborate and create innovative solutions that will add value to the society at large.

An industry report was given by Bankole Oluwafemi (@MrBankole on Twitter) of oTekbits (http://www.otekbits.com). He gave an overview of the current situation of the tech industry in Nigeria. He rounded off his session by asking a question which he asked the participants to ponder on:  Is the current e-commerce scene in Nigeria a bubble or a gold rush?

Inmobi Session

The presentation began with Moses Kemabiro of Inmobi giving a presentation of the survey conducted on 1700 respondents in Nigeria. A lot of interesting data was revealed which showed the kind of Ads that do well in Nigeria. It was also revealed that text based ads were the most successful because users tend to think that it’s part of the content. Some of the findings of the survey are:

1. 3 out of 5 App users in Nigeria have bought a mobile app before.
2. Excellent graphics among other things was one of the features that made users buy apps
3. 95 % of Mobile App users in Nigeria are willing to pay for a good app that is adequately priced.

At the end of the presentations, a lot of questions were asked, most of them focusing on how to monetize a mobile app using Inmobi. Moses Kemibaro and Joel Rao did justice to the questions that were asked.

Missed the session? You can download the presentation here.

Eskimi Session

Aside Inmobi’s presence at the event, we were honored to have Vytautas Paukstys (CEO of Eskimi) in our midst. You can follow him on twitter via @vytaspaukstys. Vytautas explained the need for Nigerian Developers to focus on their core market which is the users with feature phones. He emphasized that those developing for Android, iOS and Blackberry only are limiting themselves to a very small part of the market because feature phones still make up a large portion of the market. He also encouraged the developers in the audience to develop for Eskimi because of the potential market of 5 Million Nigerians using the service.

Another key highlight of the event was the “app showcase” session. Three Apps were showcased at the event. The Apps were SWK (SMS Word Korrector), IPolice (For reporting crime incidents) and Prowork (easy online project management).

Prowork: First up was Prowork and the app was presented by Francis Onwumere. Prowork is an online platform for project management which allows you to easily create and share projects with team member using email and SMS. He gave a live demonstration of how the app works by sharing his screen with the audience and creating a new project. He also showcased the various features that the Application has.  The project aims to eliminate the various complexities that are involved in traditional project management so that Businesses can focus on making money and adding value. It has features like SMS notifications, progress reports, Document sharing etc. You can check Prowork out here (http://www.prowork.me)

SWK: Next up was SWK and it was presented by Ebundetan Oyedele of iQube Solutions. SWK is an application that analyses text sent into your text-based system and automatically corrects it based on a dictionary database of words. It chooses the words that are closest in spelling to the wrong word and replaces that wrong word. This app was created by iQube Solutions and the link to the demo of the app is here (http://is.gd/swkapp).

iPolice: And the last app that was showcased was iPolice. IPolice is a community policing platform designed to engage Nigerians in order to make this nation a safer place. It can also be used as a crime trend analysis tool. The presenter explained that he found out that there is hardly any information online about the security situation in Nigeria.  The project aims to do the following:

• Encourage Nigerians to be more active in community policing by providing a medium for them to share their local intelligence data (crimes that have happened in their area recently, personal experience)
• Provide intelligence analysis of the crime and security data that is gathered.
• Provide security and safety information for Nigerians. Citizens will in turn use this information to protect themselves
• Help to locate the nearest Police Station with address and contact details for quick and easy crime reporting.

Interested in learning more about iPolice, click here (http://www.ipolice.com.ng).

The next Mobile Monday Nigeria will take place on the 29th of October, 2012 and we will keep you posted about the theme and what to expect.