Bosun Tijani, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Lagos-based Co-Creation Hub has described telecoms companies as the biggest players in the nation’s mobile application space. According to him, the various networks are focusing more on contents.
“The biggest player in the mobile application space is actually the telcos. We have started seeing trends that point in the direction that they are taking the issue of content more seriously,” he told ThisDay.
Prior to the increased attention to contents, he said Value Added Service (VAS) through Short Message Services (SMS) used to be the focus back.
“But now market leaders like MTN are setting up a mobile application store which is the first in the country,” Tijani said.
According to him, such initiatives could be the game-changer because “once the telcos push mobile apps, invariably all subscribers will have access to them and that is good news for app developers.”
He said there is an already wetted appetite for smart solutions in Nigeria.
He said: Nigerians are smart people – people want to do things in smart ways and essentially what mobile apps do is to enable you do a lot of things with your mobile device. You go to a bank branch close to you and the banking hall is filled with people because they need to go there to do practically everything. But there are mobile apps that allow you to do everything- money transfer, check your balance, and interact with customer care.
“The more people are aware of such solutions the more life becomes easier for everybody. In terms of consumption, the capacity is there. The platform to make it more available is growing from what we see with the telcos and internet penetration. Once these are sorted, the question then is do we have the capacity to produce interesting mobile apps?”
