It was May 7, 2019, when Google held their annual event called Google IO and talked about “the next billion users”.
They said that these are people who have never held a smartphone before. Some don’t even know how to read and write their own mother tongue!
I honestly did not pay any attention until I heard from the radio today that Vodacom is promoting “SMART Tochi” these are the feature phones which have 4G internet access!
After hearing that , I immediately began to dig into it. I learned that Vodacom has sold so many SmartTochi phones in two weeks which completely broke their projections.
I used to think that the next billion users will only be using these touch screens but NO,
They are also coming from SmartTochi phones, and they are here!
These people will need new apps and websites, which currently doesn’t exist in their phones. Plain HTML, CSS, and JS is the way you will be able to make products for these people. For entry-level smartphones , You might need to trim down your app.
They will prefer voice command more than typing, physical keyboards are hard to type with. These might be the first “voice native users”.
Now you might ask yourself why should you bother to even make something for them, they don’t even have enough money to pay you.
Well, other than just having a different business model. You can get a much more customer base who in the future might be able to afford the smartphones. Bonus reason is that western companies might not see an opportunity here yet so there is less competition here 😀
It’s a good thing to have internet inclusion regardless of income, even if there will be only one phone per family.
With the government (Tanzania) having their services online nowadays, this is a heaven-sent solution. With more than 1 billion Africans who are unbanked,
You can now build new solutions that have never existed before because The next billion users are here, in Africa.
Thanks for reading, Please let’s connect
Instagram : nickyrabit
Twitter : nngailo
Email : nicky@nickylegnard.com
Facebook and LinkedIn: Nicholaus Legnard
This is something like an opportunity to us! Just started developing something for this billion users can’t wait to have them in my product
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