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On Google African Forum, “it is impossible to work with Africa as a unit.”
Posted by: CareTaker on December 3, 2007 Under: Africa, California, Discussion Lounge, Editor's Pick, USA
Muti ThisSouth African Marco’s blog writes on the first Google Forum. Excerpts:
When the the question of what can Google do to help the situation arose…the answers were drastically different. In countries where the government was a brick wall the situation is very difficult. Many African countries have constant power cuts and those that are better off are seriously lacking Internet connectivity. As bad as the situation is in South Africa, as much as we complain, the other countries in Africa can only dream of what we have. This problem of poor infrastructure needs to be solved before anything can be done about brining technology into the rest of Africa…All of these different scenarios Google is capable of helping out. It is only a question of how far they are willing to go with this.
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Frederic | Dec 4, 2007 | Reply
Can we know more what transpired at this forum ?
How many partnership does google intend to work out with African governments and the african private sector. Agreements and deals such as the one they signed with the Kenyan, Rwandese govs and safaricom would ensure that Google softwares, Google mobile application and google brand image gain a lot of market share.
It kinds of remind of the case study about how AOL by giving away free AOL installation cds everywhere they could , took over the market in front of MSN or Netscape.
Google should mass release Android in Africa, the mobile platform would certainly take over the projected 320 million cell user market , the recognition factor might drive
Africans to adopt the product with much more ease than a US, chinese ,Japanese or European consumer.
The google phone if priced accordingly and packed with functionalities that truly meet the the African consumers needs would be a hit.
My question is how do content providers in Africa benefit from it, Are we going to be able to distribute music, film, books, images that way ? Are we going to create mobile dating site, mobile social networks ?
Is the tourism industry or the merchants are going to leverage the fact that 300 million people are going to be readily reachable at all time through their phone ? How do you communicate other that by SMS, have transactions with these consumers through the phone ?