Cellphone business = your ticket outta here?
by Fred on 13/10/06 at 2:31 pm
2 comments
‘60% of South African households own a cellular telephone. 20% own a landline. 17% have both.‘ – this from Eighty20.
When I saw this a couple of weeks ago I thought ‘wow’ – cell phones are the way to go! Forget the internet, let’s go mobile…!
Since this I’ve spoken to a bunch of people with entrepreneurial ideas based on mobile technology. These ideas include the following sectors:
- property
- schools
- insurance
- cars
- information
Somehow, though, I get the impression that, like most businesses, mobile technology is not a ‘licence to print money’ (as one breathless entrepreneur assured me recently). It requires a lot of time, publicity and, most of all, the numbers to generate critical mass.
Fred Roed is the marketing guy in the Ideate crew. He runs a web marketing company called World Wide Creative and loves writing about people out there doing marketing right. View more articles by Fred.
Karin
Oct 15th, 2006
Today I read a story in the Saturday Times (which we always read on Sunday
) that made me think about this topic.
‘Banker’ who lends to the poor wins Nobel Peace Prize
“The inspirational economist Muhammad Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for helping lift millions of his fellow Bangladeshis from poverty through a pioneering scheme that lends tiny amounts of money to the very poorest of borrowers.�
Read here for more details http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25689-2402640,00.html, but the little story next to this article in the paper told about how one of new-found woman entrepreneur use her loan (£20) to buy a mobile phone and by ‘renting’ it out (pay-per-call) to the rest of her village made enough money to repay the loan and interest, plus enough profit to start a restaurant in the village. She is now the proud owner of 4 outlets.
Talk about mobile technology and ‘printing money’
Warms the heart
David e
Nov 24th, 2006
Mobile is huge in South Africa that’s for sure.
Making money from it is a bit harder.
Admob.com is the adsense of mobile sites at the moment.
But I think it should be looked at more like an auxilliary (helper) service to customers.
I always have tons of ideas of what can be mobilized.
My own wap site at http://wap.defza.com