Facebook floods into mobile mad Africa.
Jim Kirkwood
re March 31st workshop.
Jim
Guardian Weekly. O1.01.10
Facebook floods into mobile mad Africa.
By Richard Wray
Having swept the US and conquered Europe, social networking site Facebook is spreading rapidly in Africa. From Libya to Tanzania, Facebook is fast becoming the continent's most: visited mobile site, as Africans use their phones to access the internet, according to a study by Oslo-based software developer Opera of the top 10 mobile web countries in Africa.
Even Twitter is making an impact; appearing as the ninth most visited mobile internet site in South Africa and Kenya.
The most popular African destination on the mobile web is Facebook. The social networking site is visited by users of Opera's mobile web browser in six out of the 10 countries surveyed by the company. Google is either number one or two in every African state except Kenya, where Yahoo dominates.
Email services such as Hotmail and Gmail are also popular, as is You Tube. : The online video site has its highest rankings in Egypt, at number three, : and Libya, at number four. Among news sources the BBC figures in the top 10 most visited sites in Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia. CNN features prominently in the top 10 in Nigeria, _ Ghana and Zambia. Sport features strongly, with French sports newspaper L'Equipe the sixth most visited: mobile web site in Ivory Coast. Egyptian mobile users flock to Arabic sports p6rtal Filgoal.com and Libyans prefer rival Koora.com
The African mobile phone market – at more than 400 million subscribers - is larger than North America. Some countries, such as South Africa, have mobile penetration levels - the: number of handsets compared with size of population - close to those of Western Europe. For many in Africa, mobile telephones are the only way they can access the internet because of the poor quality, and often complete lack, of fixed-line networks. Fierce competition has pushed mobile prices down for consumers, while many of :
the latest handsets available in Africa allow easy access to the mobile internet. Web browsers can also be installed on older phones.
The mobile web browser developed' by Opera is the most popular in Africa, accounting for more than half the market, and Opera estimates that the: number of handsets using its browser: across the top 10 African states has: leapt 177% in the past year. The' report looks at South Africa, Nigeria, : Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Ivory Coast, Zambia, Tanzania and Namibia. Opera refuses to give overall customer numbers for Africa, but in its largest market - South Africa - it had 1.5 million "unique users" in October.
Internet-enabled handsets are being used to access ever more mobile web sites, with page views shooting up : 374% between November. 2008 and' last month. In some countries, such as Kenya and Zambia, many pages are being accessed each month as handsets are often used by more than one person to get online: Across the continent roadside kiosks proliferate, where people "rent out" mobiles. Increasingly they are being hired out as computers, allowing those who cannot afford a computer of their own to access the internet.
Opera's mobile internet browser is . used by almost 27% of all mobile internet users worldwide. The iPhone is in second place, with Nokia's web browser in third. Between them the top three have nearly 70% of the market. Opera estimates that it has more than 41.7 million users worldwide.
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