Source: Google Play
Vincent Maher, vice president of growth and product strategy at Mxit, revealed the company is still in the process of experimenting with implementation of the app on the smartphone platform.
He explained the messaging method will operate in a similar fashion, while it will lean towards a more app-driven platform.
Although Maher admitted it to be a challenge, he does not view it as a major concern.
“We don’t really know where we will be at. It will be a critical moment in the story. We will either top or fade away.
“A lot of intelligent people are thinking about it all the time,” Maher commented regarding the Mxit development team.
He continued: “After all, Mxit was built by one guy and had gone viral literally overnight.”
Maher countered defeating rumours doing the rounds regarding Mxit’s popularity.
He said the generation the service was initially launched to has just grown up now, taking the app with them through school and university.
Regarding Mxit’s position as the leading South African chat network, he referred to the latest active user statistics, which stands at 6.3 million per month, 4.5 million per week and 2.6 million per day.
The collective number of logins equals 47 per cent of the South African population count.
The population spread usage breaks down to 54 per cent black, 76 per cent mixed-race, 13 per cent white and seven per cent Indian users.
Four of the five most popular devices Mxiteers chat from are Nokias, namely the X2, 5130, C1-0 and 710 models, with the fifth being the Samsung SGH-E250.
Also running in African countries such as Nigeria, the Nokia 5130 is the most popular device used for Mxit chats.
Despite competition from similar apps such as BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), WhatsApp and WeChat, recently launched in South Africa, Mxit is currently South Africa’s biggest social network.
Mxit 6.4, the latest Android version was released last month.
The initial Android launch in June 2011 enabled Mxit to run on a variety of 3,000 phones.
Maher also pointed out that there were no negative user comments from the first 80 million screen views received with the Android launch, which in his opinion is quite an achievement in for this “insanely big number”.
HumanIPO reported on today’s (Friday, March 1) release of Mxit Launch, a community content managing service available on the Java version of Mxit 6.3.
Maher spoke as a guest speaker at the 27dinner on February 27 in Cape Town.
