Nigeria yet to tap into $30bn global mobile app market – Akideinde

Tell us about the TECNO mobile App, (Boom Player)

It is without a doubt that TECNO Mobile is the leading brand in technology and innovation across Africa. Our mission has always been for our users to experience more and Boom Player was developed in light of this – to ensure that our devices deliver on its value promise of pure entertainment that suits your lifestyle. Our passion for music and art motivated us to create this Boom Player, a digital content (Music & Video) app that allows music lovers to access a huge catalogue of music and videos from African and International artists. The contents are available for streaming and download and it is fast becoming the number one music app in Nigeria and Africa as a whole. We are continuously in the top five of the Top Free Apps charts and have also been number 1 in the daily trending apps on the Google Playstore. We attribute some of this success to our ability to solve two nagging issues of content creators; transparency in music distribution platforms and of course piracy. By providing a Content Management System, we were able to give content providers direct access to real-time and accurate analytics at all times making our music service very transparent and building trust in return. Also we got the distribution right from the onset; piracy usually thrives with lack of a proper distribution channel. Usually when a customer buys a new phone, he or she is quickly bombarded by lurking pirates hawking digital contents out there. By preloading Boom Player on all smart TECNO androiddevices, we were able to build a proper distribution channel for content with a few taps or clicks, eliminating the need for users to purchase illegal contents.

App distribution is also a big challenge for any app. You can build an amazing product, but still have difficulty getting it to users. With Boom Player on millions of TECNO smartphones shipped into Africa monthly, we were able to get the app to the users directly and easily.

Research played a key role in our success story; we studied not only the other successful apps, but the bad apps as well. We found out what these apps did badly and made sure we didn’t make the same mistakes.

Our ability to provide and curate trending songs, fans’ favourites and the classics in both audio and video form along with its lyrics with a cleanly designed platform has helped users find and discover content with so much ease.

Users can decide to subscribe which allows them to either stream content or download for offline use (i.e. when the Internet is not available) or purchase the songs outright. Users can also create playlists, share what they are listening to via social media and interact on the artists’ pages and content

In just over a year, we have truly become one of the fastest growing music services continuously evolving, learning and improving it with feedback from the users & content providers and research into innovative new features

How will you assess the Nigerian mobile app environment?

The mobile industry in Nigeria continues to scale up quickly with Africa itself seen as a “mobile-first” continent. Nigeria currently has the highest Smartphone penetration rate in Africa (about 41 percent). Most of this rapid growth can be attributed to TECNO Mobile’s dominance in the Nigerian mobile phone market. Studies in Nigeria reveal that the most popular mobile phone brand is TECNO, and by default, Android is the most popular app store.

TECNO stays true to the maxim “think globally, act locally”, achieving great success in translating advanced technology into superior localized products. The smartphone penetration was really made possible with TECNO’s ability to provide smartphones at a very close price range of featured phones, making the transition easy. TECNO has continued to design the highest level of products with only one target – to give consumers the most suitable product at the best price. This has encouraged the rapid adoption of smartphones.

In such a few short years, the improvement of mobile phone networks has transformed communications in Nigeria. Data prices keep falling due to the healthy competition amongst data service providers with the providers providing even better and higher speed networks to the end users. A recent report (I believe conducted by Twinpine) reveals that with 1,000.00 naira, users can buy 15 times more data in 2016 that they could in 2011.

Mobile penetration is said to be currently around 40% in Nigeria and Nigeria has officially been tagged as the most “mobilized” country in the world with 76% of all internet traffic in Nigeria coming through mobile according to the same report.

All these factors have created opportunities in the Nigerian mobile app environment with demanding users wanting a constant supply of apps that solve their daily needs and requirements Over 30% of Nigerians using featured phones have switched to TECNO and other android smart-phones, whether high end or low-end prices and in turn, this makes them, users of mobile apps. This has allowed Nigerians to jump right into the digital era by accessing cheaper and affordable data rates and easy access to social media and other app downloads.

With much access to the Internet and mobile technology, the Nigerian mobile app environment has allowed for apps to become a part and parcel of our daily activities.

How will you assess the mobile app business in Nigeria?

The mobile apps business in Africa as a whole is laden with huge potentials. It’s sad to note that even though the global mobile app market is worth nearly thirty billion dollars, Africa (Nigeria inclusive) has barely a share in this. There is such a huge void for apps ‘made in Nigeria for Nigeria, Africa and the world’.

Did you know that more than 40 billion (yes billion!) mobile apps are downloaded and used across the globe every year? That is millions of downloads every day – more than 100 million downloads a day! It’s sad to note that Nigerians do not use local apps as much as the international apps, even with the decent rise of Nigerian apps coming up.

Since the surge of mobile apps in 2008, Nigeria has remained an under-performer in mobile apps business. This is pretty much evident in Google Play store Top overall charts where only 16 local apps break into the top 100.

The opportunities for the mobile app business in Nigeria is huge as the growth in Smartphone usage continues to rise. As long as App developers can create killer apps like Boom Player that solve problems, appeal or are very useful to Nigerians, adoption of local apps will grow in tandem with the smartphone growth. The appeal of Mobile apps is because of the diversity of their use. There’s an app for that reigns true as there are pretty much apps for everything anything you can think of – music, entertainment games, education, information services, news, social media, chatting, religion, healthcare, food and transport. Developers just simply need to start providing local apps for basically everything

Monetisation and revenue generation may also act as a driving force to grow more localised apps with most of the current local apps depending on revenue from ads. Payments for services have remained a bottleneck for local apps. Across most of Nigeria and even Africa, credit and debit card ownership levels remain extremely low, and the usage of these cards is even lower due to cases of fraud. Google Pay usage is also low in Nigeria. The most popular payment gateway is Premium SMS or Direct Carrier Billing via Telcos. In a country, where over 97percent of the mobile lines are pre-paid; it’s a preferred option for app developers to have payments deducted from the user’s airtime as the conversion rate is said to be higher.

The users perceive paying using their airtime as a much better experience than using a payment card. It offers a sort of convenient ‘one click’ purchase model where they are in control of the purchase because they start it up by a tap, swipe or click and they also don’t have to worry about card security fears.

The only drawback to this is that telcos have been known to take up to 80 per cent of revenues. The remaining revenue is further shared with a licensed Value Added Service Provider since, by regulation, apps aren’t allowed to connect directly into the billing system of Telcos. So at the end of the day, it requires extremely high volumes to make a service profitable in the already difficult app market. That is the reality we face with the current payment platform. Nigeria and Africa continue to cry for that killer mobile payment solution (an app maybe) that works within our issues – offline, online, banked, under-banked, and unbanked and will allow consumers the freedom to utilise their digital wallets. A few new payment players like flutterwave have sprung up, showing promise.

By 2017, I believe we will see an influx of local mobile apps into the Nigerian mobile app ecosystem that will be centered on delivering social, entertainment and economic benefits.

What are the aims or objectives of the Boom Player Mobile App?

Boom Player’s main aim is to build the largest and most sustainable digital music ecosystem in Africa for content creators and providers. It’s time to remind people how exciting and essential music is to their lives. The ecosystem will ensure that; Creators and owners get paid for their content, and consumers and buyers get excellent service

By bringing music creators, owners, providers, lovers, fans, and users under one roof, we can build up the commerce landscape for the global music and entertainment industry.

Boom Player is developed in line with TECNO’s mission to allow users EXPERIENCE MORE by providing an avenue to enjoy seamless entertainment. Simply think of Boom Player as a lifestyle and entertainment app with a focus on music. With Boom Player, you’re able to download and listen to your favourite songs and watch videos on the go.

Boom Player allows music lovers to access a huge catalogue of music and videos from African and International artists. The contents are available for streaming and download.

Boom Player will definitely bring fans closer to artistes and music they love with its user friendliness and share-ability, alongside other amazing features such as the ability for users to win coins to purchase content.

What else can the Boom player app do; I mean what other features are embedded in it?

The Boom Player app is packed with so many features; I will run you through them.

Under our Discover Music section, you get a 360-experience music, videos, charts and playlists amongst other outstanding features available on the go at your fingertips. Our professional content specialists curate music (audio and video) into the new & recommended sections, charts and playlists to make it so easy for you to discover more music you can love and enjoy. Users can also create their own playlist.

We have other sections like videos, albums, artists, and genres where you can browse through, play and download. Our moods section also provides the music you can enjoy in your current mood and state of mind. There’s also a search feature that you can use to discover more. Our message inbox will keep you up-to-date with new releases. You will always be the first to know when there’s new content from your favourite artist and more information on what’s happening in the music industry.

One of my own personal favourite features of the app is the Daily Lucky draw, which allows you to win free coins everyday that can be used to purchase any music and video you choose. Good luck spinning.

While playing music, you also get to see the lyrics of the song scroll up in sync with each bar sung or rapped so you can do a mini-karaoke with your friends. On Boom Player, your opinion matters and you can have your say on any artistes’ body of work by typing a comment or even using a smiley. It is also an incredible way for artistes and fans to interact – when you leave a comment, an artist or another fan can reply to you directly. You can share via Twitter, Facebook or copy the URL to send to friends.

How will you assess the attitude of Nigerian mobile app users to Boom Player?

It has been great so far, most users are happy to find all the songs they love in one place; they get excited with the daily lucky draw, lyrics and other features I mentioned.

We have also seen a lot of users decide on which songs to purchase based on other users interactions and feedback. We are truly building an ecosystem.

Also the ability and ease of buying the music with their airtime encourages the support of artists getting paid. The prices are not seen as an irritation to bear. Remember we are dealing with a generation that has always been able to get the songs they want for free through promotional blogs and other pirated torrents. It was very important for us to find the right equilibrium between pricing and the users.

What would you say is your competitive edge?

Our competitive edge is our product strategy, which is based on our users experiencing more. The edge is founded on emotion and innovation.

With an emphasis on emotion, we have moved our consumers from being fans to becoming critics and decision tastemakers. We believe that every human is a fan of music – regardless of the language, locality, mood, taste or socioeconomic class. We understand our users, their needs and how they interactive with our services. Through this understanding, we have empowered users to become curators and creators of the music culture.

Through innovation, we have been able to give artists, labels, content providers, and creators actual ways of getting paid for their works. With the backend access to our content management system, they get to see data and information that they can mine effectively to also give them an edge over other artists. We have combined all music sales, videos, fan demographics and social networking crucial to today’s music ecosystem.

With the features I mentioned earlier, Boom Player will not only offer users a better experience, but houses a lot of promises for musicians to finally make money beyond shows and endorsements.

What are the challenges of the business?

When you realise that a generation grew up illegally downloading content; many music consumers are very happy using ad-supported websites like YouTube to hear most of the songs out there, there’s no bigger challenge than these – competing against free and pirated content. There is a nonexistence of copyright enforcement and distribution structures. Nigeria and other African countries need similar regulations that enable the effective takedown of illegal digital content like that of the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and the EU’s Copyright Directive (EUCD). Until these government policies and regulations are created and put in force, we will continue to constantly educate artists on the need to monetise their content effectively and promote it as well through their social media profiles.

Another challenge is making enough sales that keep the artists happy after the telcos take their 70 to 80 percent of the revenues generated. These huge percentages need to come down considerably. The music industry needs to lobby as hard as they can for the Government lawmakers to support this. On one hand, it is difficult to blame the Telcos for this – they operate their businesses with such high costs due to the lack of Government supported infrastructure in place – power, security, road networks, currency value. But on the other hand, these poor infrastructures affect us all.

Tell us about your brands positioning, what differentiate you from the likes of MTN Music+, Modditt2.0 music and others?

To start off with, most competitors are fixated on the short term; our outlook is long term. We are creating an ecosystem for music that will sustain a brand loyalty that is synonymous with the TECNO brand. We love music, you love music, everyone loves music and Boom Player brings you that amazing music service to experience more at each swipe, tap, touch or click in this mobile-driven era. Aside from device penetration, which helps with content marketing and distribution effectively, we also have brand recognition and an existing customer loyalty inherited from the TECNO brand. Our rapid acquisition of diverse content is beginning to differentiate us from other competitors as well. Boom Player as an ecosystem wants to grow and sustain careers, while more precisely encourage fans to have more personal experiences around music all in one space.