My wife took this photo as we drove between Knynsa and Plettenberg Bay on the Garden Route in South Africa. This shop sells mobile access.
A couple of days later I met up with Dave Duarte, Cape Town based marketing expert, UCT lecturer and entrepreneur . We had a long leisurely coffee that turned into lunch. Cafe Neo in Cape town is a buzzing spot, free wifi, an abundance of power sockets, great views and excellent coffee.
We discussed open source, software and law, social software, evangelists and analysts, ERP, start ups, but the level of mobile commerce and advertising sophistication really impressed me.
Dave mentioned that South Africa has one of the world’s highest usages per capita of mobile web in the world, strong SMS usage and high device penetration. For many South Africans, the mobile is their only electronic device. It would not surprise me at all if the Silicon Cape shows the rest of the world a thing or two about mobile commerce. Yebo gogo.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Eric Knipp // Apr 30, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Thomas, I think this is also pretty typical in many Asian countries. Cell towers are a lot cheaper to deploy than fiber.
2 Dave // May 1, 2009 at 7:52 am
It was great to hang out, Thomas.
Opera’s January 2009 “State of the Mobile Web” report put South Africa at number 6 in the world for unique users: http://www.opera.com/smw/2009/01/
Us in the telecoms and media sector here certainly do have some exciting times ahead of us.
Leave a Comment