Trends notable from Iroko Partners, arguably the biggest online entertainment company across the continent, could be hinting on the company’ sudden reliance on mobile broadband in making strides toward becoming of African online content distributor.
The company has been in the forefront to distribute African content online.
During the recently concluded Mobile Entertainment Africa 2012, the company revealed statistics that showed that the direction for their business growth is only up.
The mobile phone growth, which is the biggest avenue for Iroko products, has over 650 million subscribers, according to the stats. This is going to go up to 735 million subscriptions across the continent by the end of 2012, and is hoped could represent a general mobile penetration rate of 73 percent.
In 2015, this number is expected to go to over 900 million subscriptions in Africa pegging an 84.9 percent mobile penetration rate.
This is a huge market for any mobile app or product innovator. The number of smartphones in the market is also steadily rising with their prices reducing significantly, thanks to the positive competition in the market.
There are over 155 million internet users in Sub Saharan Africa accounting for some 23 percent of the total inhabitants of Sub Saharan Africa.
Broadband is expected to grow significantly in the coming years in key states in Africa including Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. These countries have seen great innovation solutions developed by several tech entrepreneurs.
Huawei and Samsung are the two biggest smartphone producers, ready to capture the African market with low-end entry to the smartphone market.
Iroko Partners are the founders of entertainment apps and sites such as,Iroking for music streaming, IrokoTV for film on demand services, and both are accessible through the mobile devices and the desktop.
Jason Njoku, the founder of the company, has since seen numerous development in his company. In July this year, the company secured a US$ 2 million funding to expand their business.
Lanre Akinlagun, the head of marketing and Analytics are Iroko Partners, presented a strong case on the growth of African mobile broadband and how this will affect the growth of their products.
Iroko hopes that these stats will reflect their growth and aim to capture the market in Africa and also Diaspora.
