Akano, New Horizons Boss Seeks Focus on Mobile Device Apps

Tim Akano, chief executive officer, New Horizons Nigeria, has urged application developers in the country to focus more on developing mobile devices applications as it is the ‘New Money’ this year and beyond.

He said that, there are already in the market today over 1000 brands of Smartphone and tablets across the globe.

“The market will witness many more new smart phones and tablets joining the already saturated segment and then the current ‘blue Smartphone ocean’ will turn ‘’red ocean’’ and become dog-eat –dog. Nonetheless, the ‘’new money’’ is not in Oil and Gas, it is not in Telecommunication companies selling of air-time. It is also not in selling hardware like tablets and Smartphone. The new money is in Mobile Apps development.”

Akano stated this in a recent chat with the media practitioners in Nigeria, added that top on the league table of hardware manufacturers  today includes  HTC’s butterfly, Dell’s  Streak, Microsoft’s  Surface, ZTE’s  Nubia,  Huawei‘s Ascend Mate, Blackberry, DataWind’s UbiSlate, Samsung’s Galaxy Note,   iPad , iPhone , Goggle Smartphone, Kindle, NOOK , TECHNO, and Intel’s YOLO among others. 

“For consumers, it is good news as prices will continue its downward journey towards south in 2013. In the process, Tablets and Smartphone will become increasingly commoditized. There will be heavy causalities in this market this year. My take is that ultimately, the Apple strategy will not stand the test of time- except Apple changes its ‘’closed strategy’’. Human beings are social animals and they cherish freedom, variety and flexibility above other consideration,’ he said.

He however, noted that, Apple’s closed strategy cannot win in the final analysis and that Android with its flexibility and ease of use will erode Apple’s market share.

 According to him,’ about 90% of the Smartphone shipped in the last quarter of 2012 had Android inside.

This perhaps explains the Apple shareholder increasing anxiety about the future of Apple without Steve Jobs. Little wonder why Apple stocks fell by 12% in January alone.

Nokia and Microsoft- the famous two old Elephants will pull a positive surprise in this space in 2013. Blackberry will not make much impact in North America and Europe- despite the new blackberry E10 that was released in January 2013.

But in Nigeria, Despite the popularity of Blackberry chatting facility, there will be serious attempt to snatch its ‘’feeding bottle’’ in Nigeria by other Smartphone makers this year.’

He urged corporate organizations to evolve viable, practicable BYOD- Bring Your Own Device strategies. “Corporate data is gold, with every staff having an average of 3 mobile devices, organizations without a veritable BYOD is in danger of losing its data to competition.”

Akano explained that our lives in schools, organizations, Churches, homes, cars, will revolve around mobile devices.

And mobile devices will come with amazing new features this year. He however predicted the emergence of ‘New Apps Software Developer Millionaires’ in Nigeria in the next 5 years that will dwarf Dangote, Adenuga, Ovia’s monies.