Nigeria Archives - Page 18 of 25

Blackberry's Lunch Up for Grabs

About 3 years ago, I predicted that Blackberry would eat Nokia’s lunch. It wasn’t a prediction that required too much clairvoyance, it was apparent that Nokia was running down a slippery slope. Too bad, Blackberry ate not only the lunch but also the dinner. As far as Nigeria is concerned, Nokia is going through a time of famine. Nigeria is not the aberration; Nokia is actually next to dead; a permanent lodger at the business ICU for the past few years.

But then the story is going around full circle for Blackberry. You would wonder if this is not stale news considering that Blackberry is now getting unearthed in archeological digs in the US and other places. Well, in Nigeria the story is different.

Blackberry has been on the decline year after year for quite a while but the performance in Nigeria has been different. Because the Blackberry was the easiest and cheapest means of going online for the average folks, the sales was huge. Despite that RIM (before becoming Blackberry) treated Nigeria with contempt. No regional office, no full warranty for devices sold here.

BBM was a nice feature – you could chat all day long without additional cost of SMS. Mobile web, when available, was also nice. Most people access their emails and other things via the BBM only. Some even got a workaround on BB service on Airtel where the BB device becomes a mobile hotspot. MTN’s too mean; they never allowed that.

While I don’t know any Nigerian without a phone, it got to a level where I didn’t know any middle class folk without a Blackberry. There is even a movie about the darn thing; the movie was as crappy as every single Blackberry service.

Then Samsung and others discovered the Nigerian’s love for everything shining. For the last few months, S3 and S4 have been flying off the shelves as quickly as they could be stocked. The telcos also wised up; now there is plethora of data plans every Johnny can sign up for. Unlike the BB service where the data limit is uncapped, the mobile plans have Fedoras on them, you browse hard it finishes fast.

Why are guys dumping Blackberry? Because it is the crappiest phone you could have. It is slow; buggy; dies on you without a care; no local warranty. So you are practically on your own. Try to reboot a BB device and you would see a child grow up into an adult before it comes by. Everyone thought the Z10 would provide redemption, but alas, it didn’t.

So once again, it is swan song for another device. Blackberry would be way of the Dodo by December this year. Mark my word.

Do I feel bad for them? Not at all! I hardly feel bad about anything.

Online Banking is Fractured

It all happened in Nigeria.

I’m a customer. A brand new customer.

I just got a new account because my old bank was pissing the day light out of me. Or maybe I just got a new job that requires that I open my salary account at a bank my workplace sold its soul to.

Enough rambling.

My account has been opened but I don’t want to come to the bank. Why should I? I’m not confirmed yet so I could kiss consumer loan a sweet 6 months good bye. I’m not in the mood to queue up. The tellers are tacky and I desperately yearn for the days when customer service officer was a pretty girl not the ones that could make a Boko Haram cower in fear when she opens her mouth to spew gunshots.

Ok. I need something, anything, that wouldn’t make me ever to come to a banking hall again. I mean, I could get my account officer to bring the mortgage forms to me over a lunch at Yellow Chilli. Some good things come with having a nice job.

I was nicely told I need a suite of e-banking services. Ahem! That’s OK. And what are those?

A separate form for internet banking. OK.

Another for SMS alert.

Another for Email alert.

And yet another for mobile banking.

Now, I’m almost losing my temper.

Why not a single online sign-on and one profile to rule them all? I mean, I see same emails on my browser, in the damned BB my company gave me, on my sexy iPhone, and even with SMS! Same username and password, life is good!

Apparently, most banks coupled these applications together from a basket of vendors. They don’t talk to each other. They don’t share profiles. They don’t even know about each other’s existence. I be damned!

When the banks get it right, let me know. As for me, I’m off to play golf.

POS is a Screen-door on a Nigerian Submarine

Sometimes I find it humorous seeing banks wring their hands at the disastrous investments made in POS. As the CBN was hell-bent on dragging each off us across the generational divide of cash versus electronic payment, it found willing allies in banks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for electronic payments or commerce. It is faster, cheaper and more difficult to hide or do frauds. Frauds do exists, like it does even at your church parish, but it is way easier to trace although someone also said it is also easier to lose the shirt on your back.
That’s that for the digression.

What riles me is the apparent lack of thought on how these POS would work. The emphasis on POS, just another means of payment, was unhealthy. Unlike ATMs whose utility can be easily seen, POS can much dodgier.

And they don’t come cheap. Even after rebates, extensive bidding war and all that, a single box can settle you back as high as N70K. Since these are physical electronics items, the bean counter always insist to depreciate them fully over four years which comes to about N1,458 a month.

These tiny little beauties need more care and attention than an over pampered prima-donna. You could expect at least N2,000 spent on visitation, network connectivity and paper roll in a month. So for a single POS to breakeven, it must make income of N3,458 every single 30 days. Or is it? Not at all!

You see, in the POS business, like the proverbial Hong Kong Triad Mafia Warlord Jinja, almost everyone takes a slice of the commission made to be surrendered by the hapless merchants or mama oloja. But then only the bank that deploys the POS is made to pony up the investment upfront. But they only get to see 57.5% of the commission if and only if the acquirer is also the terminal owner. That is not most of the case but for the sake of argument, let’s imagine it’s so. So for our dear bank to make money, it must find a way to ferret out at least N6,014 worth of revenue from the transactions. So how much actually transactions would the POS do to make the merchant part with this? As commissions are fixed at 1.25% of value, that POS must grace N481,113 worth of successful transactions.

That sounds easy until you consider how treacherous the networks have been. That little POS darling sitting on the table must constantly dial home over GSM or internet. GSM is very common but dubious while the internet is expensive. You wouldn’t even smell any of that for N1,000 a month. So most often than not, the POS doesn’t work, cardholders are frustrated and many a merchants have used POS as a basketball or even squashed a roach with one.

The industry today has about 110,000 POS deployed across town with only about 14,000 seeing active duty. The rest are simply having fun and sipping Piña colada in some random warehouse. The active ones were able to push out about N11B (March 2013 – verify the number, I could have made it up) in total but the average income across the whole POS portfolio is just a little north of N1,200. There goes the POS investment.

So is there hope for POS? Yes but not the way we currently run it. Even then there seems to be another channel doing way better than POS.

Right now, I need to lay off ranting a bit. I will discuss the sexiness of web in another post soon.

Nigeria has 17M Internet Users, More or Less

Some people have been throwing some fantastical numbers about Nigeria having 43 million internet users.

I really don’t know who cooked up this ultra-sloppy data but no wonder the over-creamed salad of consultancy advices smell like rancid skimmed milk.
If Nigeria has 43 million internet users then I probably have a pink elephant, with wings, prancing around my backyard.

So how many do we have? Judging from MTN’s latest financials (2012), they have 3.8 million smart devices (those that can consume internet without choking up – actually MTN is so parsimonious that not even a 12K US Robotics modem can choke on it) and 201,000 dongles. That comes to 4M internet devices (many being fondle-slabs). Since MTN has 47.5% market ownership, we can extrapolate 8.42M internet devices. If we are optimistic, can we argue that 2 people use a device (Nobody shares my phone with me though). Maybe 17M users. Far cry from 43M.

Why this 43M magical number is apparently not wrong to smart pant consultants baffles me.

Some people are smart, but is Airtel?

No one had a gripe about NCC laying down the rule that no SMS sent in Nigeria should be more than N4. Who would be angry with such, maybe some banks and of course the Telcos who love to do nothing but rape the living daylight out of our wallets?

Of course, Airtel, ever eager to comply, sent us SMS that we shall now, henceforth be consuming bowls after bowls of SMS at N4 per serving.
But to my amazement, Airtel to Airtel SMS cost N5. At first, I felt I was seeing double (I see double with my left eye – searching for a replacement) but I wasn’t.

Whosoever made that config or decision needs a ride to someplace near Tejuosho market.