Haiti DisasterA telecoms success story...

Chams Changesthe game in ICT Training

Sim Registration:The Telco Rebirth

in Africa

Mobile Phone will become substitute for credit cards

www.mobileworldmag.com Issue 18,2010

4 Cover Story...

6 News

10 Interview

Group Publisher/Editor in Chief Akin Naphtalanaphtal@mobileworldmag.com

Editor

Anita Moritiwon

Writers

Kehinde OlesinJonah Iboma

Marketing Executive

Yinka Lawal

Reporter/Researcher

Lanre SaliuSola Aremu

Head, Creative

Yinka Adebamiro

How to contact MobileWorld MagazineUK

Belvedere, KentDA17 6DXTel: +44 777 510 9698

NIG

14 Wright StreetAdekunle, YabaLagos, Nigeria Tel: +234 8063603521info@mobileworldmag.comwww.mobileworldmag.com

ISSN: 1751-3820

Liability

While every care has been taken in the preparation of this magazine, the publishers cannot be responsible for the accuracy of information inherein, or any conse-quence arising from it.

MobileWorld is a controlled circulation magazine and -

ers worldwide. Design & printed by Instinct Media

Issue 18 2010 3

Editor’s letterWhen mobile phones came around to Nigeria it was a dream come true. Many have waited for eternity for the miracle and it came when some had even lost hope. Before a twinkle of an eye, Nigeria subscribers hit over seventy millions and still

registration to kick off by March 1, 2010. Some African coun-tries have started this, while some are about implementing. It is an interesting issue to investor, subscribers and telcom companies.

our interview with the CEO of inMobi. Other things that will catch your interest include the resignation of Zain CEO and how telcos has responded to Haiti disaster.

I believe you will enjoy the pot pourri.

Akin Naphtal

Sim Registration: The Telco Rebirth in Africa

Contents

Main One submarine cable project inches near completion

MTN, Ericsson and UNDP partners on Millennium Village project

Haiti disaster - a telecoms success story...

Vodafone Ghana Launches Quality Network Ad Campaign

Chams Changes the Game in ICT TrainingMTN Rwanda Launched Mobile Money

Ericsson brings wonder to India: World’s largest

Open University goes mobile

Mobile phones will become substitute for credit cards

The telecom industry is the most dynamic industry in Sub-Saharan Africa

Photo by: Pippa Hetherington Source; telecomTV/GSMA

10 MobileWorld Magazine visit us at: www.mobileworldmag.com

Mobile phones will become substitute for credit cards - Mr. Naveen Tewari Founder CEO

INTERVIEW

InMobi , an inte-grated and intelligent mobile advertising platform interest in the emerging mar-kets is strategic. In this interview with MobileWorld, founder, CEO Naveen Tewari bares it wall

In Mobi has been very busy in the last

few months, your growth in South

Africa, new signing in Australia, new

staff etc, tell us more about InMobi and

the recent happening in the company ?

-dous activity in the past few months. This can be attributed directly to InMobi’s rapid growth over the past year combined with renewed interest in the Mobile in-

, our focus was on emerging markets in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. We dedicated ourselves to building a scalable, mobile advertising platform in the areas well ahead of the competition. We un-derstood that these emerging markets are well ahead of developed countries when it comes to mobile technology. By build-

ended up with an integrated, intelligent mobile advertising platform that can be rapidly deployed in any market.

2009 was the year we began to scale. We grew from 8 markets to 37 in just one year and increased ad requests on our

--

North America (Anne Frisbee). These regional teams provide the local market knowledge important to our advertising and publishing customers. On the product front, we continued to make improve-ments in terms of targeting capabilities for advertisers and publishers, reports and analytics providing insight to improve

site, and most importantly a dedicated strategy on smart phones starting in Feb-ruary of 2010.

How can you compare mobile advertis-

ing industry now and three years ago ?

Three years ago, most people understood there was potential for mobile advertis-ing, but few advertisers or publishers spent time or money in the channel. Since then, several things changed. First,

tremendously and smart phone platforms the likes of iPhone and Android have brought revolutionary changes to the creative options now available. Second, other traditional forms of media and even the web continue to fragment and frus-trate advertisers who want to reach and

Third, a deep recession in the developed world combined with a surging interest in emerging markets pointed forward think-ing advertisers in the direction of mobile.

To summarize, 3 years ago mobile

advertising was not a part of the media

and some early adopters began to make it a part of their overall strategy. Today mobile advertising is on everyones list and no one wants to be left behind. It has been a gradual movement, but the year of mobile advertising is here and is clearly going to stay for good.

What level of technical support do you

offer publishers ?

We offer 24/7 self support to our pub-lishers including some major enhancme-nents to our publisher tools just recently announced. A quick summary of the 3 major recent publisher product improve-ments include:

1. Ad Code V2

With our V2 Ad Code, publish-

specifying additional demographic and targeting parameters while contacting the InMobi network. This will greatly improve the relevance of the ads shown to the users,

boost the monetization by a large degree. While providing the added

-ers, the Ad Code also addresses the convenience of the basic publishers.

- Basic : for publishers who seek a technologically simple way to inte-grate with InMobi

- Advanced : for publishers with a need for technologically sophisti-cated solutions and want to integrate with InMobi in a deeper way to share additional information that might enhance monetization

advertisements in a single request. Basically the publishers can now call multiple ads simultaneously for immediate serving. Users will not only be able to enjoy a quick render-ing of the page, but the likelihood of duplicate ads will also be elimi-nated.

2. Publisher Filters

tools, publishers can better man-

-

10 MobileWorld Magazine visit us at: www.mobileworldmag.com

Mr. Naveen Tewari

Issue 18 2010 11

on the basis of landing pages that

Ads with unacceptable text

If publishers want to ensure that

to their users are shown on their

set, such as

- Filter out ads that contain “key-

Ads from competitors Generally you do not want ads from

your competitors to go up on your sites. In these cases, publishers can

competitive landing pages, such as:

- Filter out ads whose landing pages point to “www.competitor.com”

3. Publisher Reporting and Insights

(Actionable Business Intelligence)

The enhanced Publisher User Interface now provides a richer set of reports and analytics to help make business decisions with higher

Some key offerings include

and handset manufacturer allowing publishers to track the performance of the inventory more closely and take steps to ensure that the highest ad revenue from the mobile prop-erty.

- Customizable widgets in the dash-board to track near real-time KPI. Also demand dynamic graphs tuned to publisher needs.

our technology provides our publishers.

How competitive is InMobi compared

to admob and adsense ?

platform is superior to any competitor globally, particularly when considering the regional support and local knowl-edge we offer. Further, our smart phone strategy to be unveiled in February will help us further peneterate developed markets like the US and EU where smart phones are obviously more critical to the

Some evidence to back up these state-ments include our massive growth in the EU in only 6 months. We now receive over 850 million request in that market and are a solid #2 competitor. The UK is now counted as our 5th largest market

our superior publisher offering combined

-nally, we remain an independent option for publishers and advertisers. Many of our customers are wary of a global conglomerate like Google controlling their data. We offer a comparable if not superior platform, yet maintain an inde-pendent status globally. Have you look at exploring african

market after your success in South

Africa?

Yes. That’s been the plan all along. Our aim was to grow the mobile ecosys-tem in Africa as a whole and South Africa was the logical starting point as the largest ad market on the continent. After growing to become the largest ad network in South Africa, we are now actively working in other markets like Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt , etc. These mar-kets have tremendous potential and we

African footprint.

What is your current market share in

India and other operating countries ?

We do not know our share per say, but monthly ad request by continent are as follows: Asia: 4950 Million ad requests per

month Africa: 950 Million ad requests per

month Europe: 850 Million ad requests per

month Austrialia: 350 Million ad requests

per month North America: 250 Million ad

requests per month Latin America: 150 Million ad

requests per month

What is your business model and your

total mobile inventory across all mar-

kets ?

We are a mobile advertising technology platform serving three core markets in-cluding publishers, advertisers, develop-ers. For publishers, we enable ads on their mobile web sites as well as mobile applications and help them make money.

ad revenue on their mobile property. We then enable advertisers to offer a wide variety of creative units to consumers and target their ads based on different parameters like geography, handset, site type etc. As for our total market foot-print, InMobi currently has 7.5 billion ad requests per month and is available in 37 countries across the globe. InMobi has over 3000 partner publisher sites with over 250 advertisers on the network.

What are the expectationsof mobile

advertising for 2010, challenges and

opportunities ?

There is so much to be said on this topic.

Allow me to stick to 3 key points.

1). This really is the year of Mobile advertising. It has been predicted to come of age for a couple of years now, but we feel 2010 will be the year mobile advertising truly enters the world stage as a critical channel required focused investment. This claim can be backed up by several observations and events in 2009.

US mobile market both for con-sumers and developers based on an

and Apple’s entry into the market -

tions clearly validate the importance and potential of mobile advertis-

growth during 2009 illustrate the desire for publishers and advertisers to commit to this growing advertis-ing medium.

2) In the coming year, we believe that developing nations in markets like Asia and Africa will see the largest growth for multiple reasons. First, these large untapped markets are made up of mainly younger con-sumers whose only screen is their mobile phone. . To leverage this opportunity, the prices of mobile phones will fall and operators will begin to provide more attractive offers and cheaper prices for data. Unlike the web in the 90s which

the mobile revolution is truly global and offers a much greater opportuni-ty for wealth creation than the world has ever witnessed previously.

3) A third prediction for the coming year would be the breakthrough in mobile payments. 2010 will see the start of mobile phones being used as a mode of payment. Ultimately mobile phones will become a sub-stitute for credit cards, cheques, and other payment options as a more secure, convenient means of trans-

infancy, the coming year will see the

years time

Simply put, InMobi will continue to be the world’s leading independent mo-bile ad network. We will continue our rapid growth leveraging our competitive advantage in emerging markets globally to build a superior product for publish-ers, advertisers, and developers. We will emerge as thought leaders in the space helping the industry move from where it is today to becoming one of the most important advertising channels in the world.

INTERVIEW

Issue 18 2010 11