It was a sign of the times.
Last week Samsung launched their much awaited Samsung Galaxy
S4 smartphone. The S3 was already a revelation but barely two years later the
South Korean company has launched an upgraded version that can all but bend
this way and that and sing the third stanza of the national anthem in Korean.
A presentation of the phone’s new features lasted the better
part of an hour and during all that time not a peep about the phone’s voice
functionality. Makes you wonder why we still call them phones?
When current Bobby Collymore took over at the helm of Kenyan
telecom giant Safaricom a few years ago he said that data services is where the
business will be and that a time was coming when voice will be given away free
of charge by telecom companies.
The company’s latest results point to that reality. In 2012
while revenues from voice almost touched a billion dollars, non-voice revenue
came in at just under $500m but had grown by 29% from the previous year. Voice
revenues grew by 13% during the same period.
Assuming both services continue growing at the same rate, in
five year’s time both revenue streams will be at par. Of course the bulk of non-voice revenues comes
from M-Pesa, the money transfer part of the business.
A friend is currently touring in Europe and at the end of
her day she posts pictures of what she has seen. The clarity of the pictures is
such that I had to ask whether she was using her phone or not.
During the aforesaid Samsung presentation the company
officials unveiled a new application in the phone which would allow up to seven
phone holders to share the same music simultaneous. If you turned up the volume
on all seven you would have literal surround sound system.
If ever one needed a real life example of creative
destruction, a reference to capitalism’s
tendency to destroy and rebuild in order to progress, one need not look any
further than mobile telephones. They are
changing the way we do things, closing down whole industries and creating new
opportunities.
There was a time when
the telephone, the fax machine, the computer were three distinct devices. No
not only do you find all these functions in one phone today but in addition you
can have a camera, video and voice recorder, music player and radio all in the
palm of your hand.
The destructive aspect of this development is quite obvious.
The music industry is suffering. Why should I get a CD or a
CD player for that matter when I can download music onto my phone from the
internet? What about the recreation camera industry – the mobile phone must
have had something to do with the bankrupting of the industry icon Kodak
recently. The financial industry will have to think long and hard otherwise there
is a real danger of extinction. Now there is something called crowd funding,
where people from around the world connected by the internet and source funds
and provide funds to absolute strangers to further their businesses.
A report recently showed that there are up to eight million
mobile accounts in Uganda, compare this with the five million accounts in our
banking industry. And the amount of money being held in accounts for 30 days or
more is rising.
This will have far reaching implications for many
companies—If your business is cameras or fax machines or voice recorders you
will want to think long and hard about the future.
Most importantly these phones will increase worker
productivity and lower the cost of doing business. This could mean higher
incomes for workers, more economic activity for economies and more people
jumping out of poverty.
It is inevitable. You are not rich as you can because you do
not know something. Some people are richer than others because they know more.
The evolution of the phone to beyond a mode of communication is bridging
information gaps wherever they pop up.
The question then will be how do you take advantage of this
revolution. It will have to begin with embracing the technology, integrating
them in our lives and being ready to do away with old ways of doing things.
Easier said than done, but there is really no choice.
