Author: Cyrus

The PC market in the world is shrinking globally and in Africa it stagnated while in East Africa, the growth is still impressive. The PC shipments in Africa declined 3.2% year on year during the first three months of 2011 while the PC market grew a marginal 1%, East Africa (including Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Uganda) recorded a massive 76% growth in PC shipments. The data provided by IDC expects the East African PC market to further grow by about 35–45% in 2011 before cooling off in 2012. Kenya is showing the greatest appetite for PCs in the region with…

Samsung is showing how popular the SMART TV is. Though still young and only with more than 550 Apps, the Apps Store today reached another milestone, according to a blog post. The apps in the store have seen downloads in excess of 5 million. You can access the app store from any of the available Samsung LED Smart TVs already even being sold in Nairobi (former SONY centre on Kimathi street opposite corner house). The growth is encouraging since, according to Samsung, the store reached its first million in about 9 months, 11 months to reach 2 million and about…

Many people receive emails from known addresses asking for help in the form of money. This is obviously a scam but some might end up falling for it when they receive the mail from a good friend. This is not the greatest/most complicated email scam of alltimes, but the technique can be used to send a mail with an attachment that contains malware. Gmail as added a new feature to tackle this scam. How does the scam work? First,  the email of a person is compromised by hacking into it. Then, email for help in form of money is asked…

If you really want more from Social media and App development in Africa, you should be in Cape Town from 1 – 2 June, 2011. The city is hosting one of the region’s leading technology networking events. The Social Media World Forum Africa and Apps World Africa are set to bring leading international brands like Google, Nokia, Facebook, Samsung, BlackBerry and Microsoft together. Some of the leading Apps and Social Media practitioners in Africa like MXit, Motribe and Afrozaar are also set to be at the venue. The world’s leading digital brands like Nokia, Google Android, BlackBerry, Facebook will be hosting free-to-attend developer workshops,…

Globally, 60 percent of travel for both leisure and business are being booked over the internet. But this is not the same with local tourism companies in East Africa . Very few of the many companies in East Africa effectively use the internet as a tool to get new visitors locally or globally. They mostly rely on mostly email bookings which is not enough. ‘Online’ to local companies basically means email and they don’t effectively use social media and web as a tool to market themselves. Presence online for such local companies has only meant a static web page which…

David Kobia is not new to anyone who has known the Kenyan online community for long. He has run Mashada (one of the first online destinations frequented mostly by Kenyans) for the longest time you can imagine. Though Mashada’s stature kind of waned and only remained relevant to Kenyans in the diaspora, David later co-founded Ushahidi with others. Fast Company has listed David as one of the most creative individuals in business in 2011. The list has names like Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post), Oprah Winfrey(Oprah Network), Wadah Khanfar (Aljazeera), Tina Fey and Mikael Hed of Rovio. It is not clear what…

Vodacom South Africa hopes to replicate the success of various Safaricom products. First was M-Pesa and now they have just launched the Airtime credit system known in Kenya as Okoa Jahazi. Qualifying Vodacom SA prepaid customers will be able to get R10 worth of advance airtime which will be repaid by deducting the same amount from the next recharge. To qualify for this service, you must have been a Vodacom SA client for a period of one year. You must also have recharged you account with a minimum of R29 per month for the last 6 months. You must also…

Be ready Nairobi, another great event for the tech industry in Kenya. CISCO is bringing you the Expo 2011 to Nairobi. The event will see CISCO showcase various futuristic products like the unified computing system, telepresence, CISCO Webex, virtualization services and more. The event is free to attend. Just come to KICC on the said dates.

Konza Technology City has been drawing comments lately. Many have been inspired by the idea and even Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania have all decided to copy the idea though they don’t have as much info as the Kenyans. The Kenyan model has been marketed in Italy, Germany, USA, China and even India and part of the infrastructure in the phase one of development might be fully booked in the next 2 months. Out of the 12 hotels which are suppose to built in the city, nine have been fully booked. The Konza Technology City will surely change the country. It…

Wael Ghonim, the Egyptian Google Executive who started the Facebook revolution which toppled Mubarak recently had a very interesting interview with Jon Snow of Channel4News. In the interview, Wael talked about “Wael the person” saying that the screen barrier brings out his bravery. He also says that the revolution should neither be called a Facebook revolution or an Arab spring. It should be called Arab Revolution. Wael was appearing at Google’s European Zeitgeist 2011. Watch the interview below [youtube width=”580″ height=”420″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqh0e5hX5KY[/youtube]

Safaricom has announced its full year results for 2010/2011. The results were surprising, thought provoking and kind of assuring considering the complaints from the operators and also the industry analysts regarding regulation, competitions and the market outlook. Key among them was that Safaricom was able to have a growth in active customers by 8.8% to 17.18Million compared to March 2010. This surprised the pundits who believed that with the strong re-branding and price cuts by Airtel and onslaught by other operators, there would have been a decline on the Safaricom clients. Most impressive was the growth in Mobile and Fixed…

Jamii Telecom is said to be at advanced stages of launching a promotion similar to the just launched Safaricom 100 Mbps Business Wise promotion. The Safaricom and Jamii Telecomms offer comes after the government through the ministry of information and communications intervened and requested that the two companies provide cheap fibre link to SOHO businesses. Safaricom will provide the last mile connection through their Wimax link. At the Huawei IDEOS’ briefing yesterday, the PS, Dr Ndemo, intimated that talks were conclusive between the government and the two telcos and such offer was to be expected. The offer was to go…

In a very very suprising move, Airtel Kenya has appointed John Barorot as its new Network Director. John Barorot, according to Safaricom, was edged-out in a move which was meant to streamline management at Safaricom. Very credible sources though told us that he was sacked and joining Airtel within just two months might be out of wanting to teach his former employer a lesson. The appointment is a major scoop for Airtel which is struggling to build its 3G network to effectively compete with Safaricom in the data market. John was the immediate past Chief Technical Officer of Safaricom having worked…

Huawei has today announced that the IDEOS U8150 is the fastest selling smartphone in the table. The phone which was launched in kenya through a partnership with Safaricom in Januari now controls 45% of the Kenyan smartphone consumer market. More than 60,000 units of the IDEOS have been sold and Safaricom and Huawei are impressed. The sales in February were 73% better than the January sales in Kenya. The research on Kenyan smartphone market was done by GFK Retail and Technology, one of the leading independent market research tracking sales data in technical consumer goods. The phone is available in…

Many countries have been impressed by the uptake of mobile banking in Kenya. That has made the countries so much admire the service and want to implement it. In August 2010, Vodacom South Africa launched the service. Now Pieter Uys, Vodacom group CEO, says that M-Pesa has failed to live up to Vodacom’s expectations in SA. Mr Uys says that Vodacom has registered “over” 100 000 M-Pesa clients in South Africa since its launch. This is not what Vodacom expected. At the launch last year, Vodacom say it expected to register not less than 10m M-Pesa customers within three years. That…