By Riku Salminen - CEO, Jongla
93% of Nigerian adults own a mobile phone, of which 51% are smartphones
Instant messaging is coming to Nigeria as smartphone penetration grows. 93% of Nigerian adults own a mobile phone, of which 51% are smartphones. Even though the figures are rapidly growing, only some 6% of the Nigerian population is using social services like Jongla, Snapchat or Facebook on smartphones. The growth of the social service usage in Nigeria is driven by men, as 66% of Facebook accounts belong to them.
We are going to see explosive growth in mobile social usage. Nigeria is a mobile first country with only 13% of adults owning a laptop or desktop computers. There’s huge potential for social smartphone apps as the remaining half of mobile phone owners adopt smartphones in the coming years. Of the 185 million people in Nigeria, some 11 million are so far accessing social apps via mobile.
In Nigeria, mobile networks are often unreliable and mobile data is expensive
To win over the Nigerian audience, we had to overcome the obstacles characteristic of emerging markets. In Nigeria, mobile networks are often unreliable and mobile data is expensive. In order to deliver messages safely and to save user’s prepaid data plans, we have built the service to transfer as little data as possible.
Where Jongla aims to win the battle for Nigerian instant messenger users is through innovation and creating a light but full-featured app. We have made the strategic decision to make our apps as low in data consumption as possible. This way, people in emerging nations can save money and data with our messenger.
- Lite – world’s lightest messenger helps people to save money and data
- Jongla Out – send messages and chat with people inside or outside Jongla
- People – built-in community helps users to discover interesting new people nearby
- Reactions – a new way to express friendship and an interest in meeting new people
- Push-to-talk with filters – voice filters that add a layer of fun to voice messaging
Lite: Within the next two years, a whole new generation of mobile natives, roughly a billion people, will access the mobile Internet, mostly via low-end smartphones with prepaid plans. Emerging markets, the driver of this growth, still suffer from low connectivity and the high cost of data. In 2015, Jongla became the world’s lightest full-featured messaging app in an effort to help people save money and data. According to our studies, Jongla uses 80% less data compared to Viber and 25% less data compared to Facebook Messenger. Jongla also takes a fraction of data to download compared to all major competitors.
Jongla Out: Jongla Out technology means that chatting is no longer restricted to a specific app or platform. Jongla users now have the ability to chat as normal with any of their contacts, no matter what messaging service their contact is using, or even if they don’t use any. The receiver can reply via free web chat. This makes messaging simple and barrier-free for everyone.
Jongla users can now discover and interact with new friends based on their location with a built-in community feature
People: Since summer 2016, in addition to chatting, Jongla users can now discover and interact with new friends based on their location with a built-in community feature called ‘People’. The feature was designed to enable users to be able to discover interesting new people around them. To protect user privacy, only an approximate location is given and the feature is optional.
Reactions: Also, added alongside the community, is the ability to engage with user profiles with a choice of reaction. Reactions can be exchanged between people to express emotions from a simple thumbs-up, smile or even a virtual flirtation with a heart. Our emotions towards other people might sometimes be hard to put into words. We wanted to give our users a way to express their friendship or interest towards new people in a meaningful and fun way.
About the author:
Riku Salminen is one of the industry pioneers working on new OTT messaging services. Riku and his global team at Jongla is on a mission to change how people communicate in the future and driving one of the most promising mobile messaging startups towards innovation and success.
Riku has worked previously in the fields of telecommunications, media, advertising, gaming and startups. As an innovator and driver Riku has spent his entire career involved in creating new digital innovations and businesses.
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Industry address: Disrupting the instant messaging market The future of IM for Nigerian market needs
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Sources:
- Digital in 2016 by WeAreSocial
- Mobile Ecosystem Forum’s Messaging report
- Android Application Package sizes in Google Play Store, May 17th, 2016
- A data consumption study carried out by Jongla with Android SDK command line tools and Linux Kernel, June 7th, 2016
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