Industry News

Apple recovered ground on Samsung to become the world’s largest smartphone vendor in Q4 2019, as lower pricing of its iPhone 11 range spurred healthy demand in North America and Asia, Strategy Analytics stated.

The research company said the vendor shipped 70.7 million units during the quarter, some 4.8 million more than Q4 2018, with Samsung relegated to second place on 68.8 million units despite what Strategy Analytics noted had been good growth across all price points.

Huawei placed third, with shipments down 7 per cent to 56 million due to a slowdown in China, its biggest market, and tougher competition in key overseas markets including Europe. Domestic rival Xiaomi came in fourth, with success in Western Europe and a steady performance in India contributing to shipments of 33 million, 7 million higher than Q4 2018.

Oppo rounded out the top five by shipments on 30.5 million units, a dip from 31.5 million in the 2018 period.

Total shipments in the quarter of 374.5 million units were down from 376 million in Q4 2018.

The pattern was similar across the full year, with 1.41 billion units shipped down marginally on 1.43 billion in 2018, with “sharp declines” in China balanced by strong growth in emerging markets in Africa and India.

Strategy Analytics noted Samsung maintained its leading position in full year shipments on 295.1 million units, followed by Huawei (240.5 million); Apple (197.4 million); Xiaomi (124.8 million); and Oppo (115.1 million).

The research company’s figures showed Apple and Oppo were the only top-five vendors to see declines in full year shipments.

Source: www.mobileworldlive.com

The Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) approved Airtel Kenya’s acquisition of rival operator Telkom Kenya, a move which would step up competition against market leader Safaricom.

CAK director general Wang’ombe Kariuki outlined conditions for the acquisition in The Kenya Gazette, the government’s official publication, stating Airtel Kenya cannot sell the merged entity for the next five years and must fulfil all existing contracts with government entities.

In a move to safeguard jobs, CAK demanded 349 of Telkom Kenya’s 674 employees be retained after the acquisition. Two-thirds must be employed for a minimum of two years, with the rest to be absorbed by network partners. Telkom Kenya stated in August it would make 575 of its staff redundant as a result of the acquisition.

One last hurdle for the merger is an investigation by the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, which already delayed the process.

Prior to the probe, a committee in Kenya’s National Assembly said the deal had “all the hallmarks of a scandal” noting it enabled private individuals to acquire a public company “through the backdoor for a song”.

The merger of the second- and third-largest operators in Kenya was announced in February: the new company would be called Airtel-Telkom.

Source: mobileworldlive.com

 

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey revealed plans to establish an independent team to create a standard all social media companies could use to tackle harmful speech and posts, at a time of growing concern over misuse of the platforms.

In a series of tweets, the executive said the company would fund a five-person group to create rules similar to the SMTP protocol for email, with the goal of enabling multiple social media platforms to filter and block specific types of content.

The team will be named Bluesky, which will initially be helmed by Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal.

Dorsey said there is a need for social media to change the way content is handled, noting current set-ups focus too heavily on “conversation that sparks controversy and outrage” instead of messages promoting health.

In Twitter’s case, such an approach would enable it to “access and contribute to a much larger corpus of public conversation”, while also forcing it to be “far more innovative than in the past”.

Source: mobileworldlive.com

MTN Business Namibia, a provider of connectivity solutions, remains committed to transforming its business in the country to offer mobile services. It’s been two and a half years since the company was engaged in this operation.

In order to calm the potential concerns of its partners, it wanted to inform them of the progress of the process. A meeting was organized for this purpose this week by Elia Tsouros, General Manager of MTN Business Namibia.

“It’s been two and a half years since planning continues. We have recently changed our strategy for greater control on our part. With additional CAPEX, we ensure customers the best possible experience. We will have a device with our own channels and we will also be franchising certain stores, but we have a comprehensive market strategy that serves both prepaid and postpaid services. We will ensure that by the time we get to the market everything is in place and that we can provide a service that Namibia will be proud of, “ said Elia Tsouros.

As a prelude to its entry into the mobile segment, MTN Business Namibia, which claims to have already received all regulatory approvals from the Namibian telecom market, also announces that it has also rolled out its LTE (4G) service on the coast and in Windhoek. .

“We have deployed two additional sites in Swakopmund and Walvis Bay. We are deploying two additional sites in northern Namibia and we are going to expand in Swakopmund with additional infrastructure because of success in this region, and this is only this year. We will have 14 sites by the end of the year and we will continue deploying additional sites next year. For a company that had no infrastructure eight months ago, we will continue to invest in our own infrastructure and this will benefit all of Namibia, “ said Elia Tsouros.

Source: Agence Ecofin

 

Vodafone Ghana has congratulated Madam Philomena Tengey, the National Best Female Farmer, and Boris Baidoo, the Best National Digital Farmer, at the 2019 National Farmers’ Day celebrations.

As part of the telco’s support for this year’s celebrations, the two farmers were each presented with a cash amount of GH¢15,000, smart phones and Vodafone Farmers’ Club SIMs.

Additionally, they received airtime and data for 12 months, as well as free access to farmers’ helpline and useful information on crop and agriculture.

Commenting, Tawa Bolarin, Director of Enterprise Business Unit at Vodafone Ghana said: “Congratulations to all our farmers who serve as the lifelines of the economy; producing the crops and items that have defined Ghana and its exporting prowess. Our commitment is to empower females and promote digitalization in agriculture. We believe that driving innovation in agriculture will bridge the gap between farmers and critical farming information. Through our Farmers’ Club initiative, we will continue to connect farms, agribusinesses and rural communities to drive productivity, profitability and innovation.”

Vodafone also presented GH¢10,000 cash, to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) ahead of this year’s National Farmers’ Day event. All the winners at this year’s event also received Vodafone Farmers’ Club SIMs and smart phones in line with the telco’s unwavering commitment to promoting agricultural in Ghana.

This year, Vodafone extended its support to the Best Digital Farmer, in fulfillment of a promise made last year, to celebrate farmers who among other things use innovative and new technology in their operations.

The 35th edition of the National Farmers Day celebration was held in the Volta Region.

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

 

 
To climax the 10th anniversary celebration of its Mobile Money (MoMo) service, MTN Ghana on Friday showed appreciation to stakeholders for their contribution towards the success of the service.

MoMo allows customers to use mobile phones to directly send monies into their bank accounts and vice versa, purchase airtime, and pay bills.

The telecommunication network rewarded them with citations and plaques.

The categories for the awards were; ‘Pioneering Momo Partner Banks’ – Fidelity Bank, Ecobank, Cal Bank, GT Bank, Access Bank, Zenith Bank, UBA, UMB, and Stanbic Bank.

Barclay’s Bank, Republic Bank, and First Atlantic Bank were adjudged as ‘Emerging Partner Banks with Great Impact”, while Fidelity Bank was also honoured as the ‘MoMo Partner Bank Frontrunner’.

Other categories were; the ‘MoMo Fintech Pioneer’ – IT Consortium, and CoreNett Limited, and ‘Emerging and Innovative Fintech Partner’ – ‘appsNmobile Solutions’.

miLife Insurance, was honoured with the ‘First MoMo Advance Service Award’, DSTV of MultiChoice Ghana Limited with the ‘First MoMo Bill Payment Award,’ Ghana National College with the ‘First MoMo School Fees Award’ and Star Oil Company as the ‘Most Supportive MoMo Merchant.’

Individuals were also awarded for their contributions to the success of MoMo.

They were; Mr Gideon Osei Amoako as the ‘MoMo Patron,’ Mrs Elly Ohene-Adu as the ‘MoMo Powerbroker,’ Dr Settor Kwabla Amediku as the ‘MoMo Regulatory Influencer,’ and Mr Eli Hini as the ‘MoMo Trailblazer.’

Others were; Mr Bruno Akpaka as the ‘MoMo Master Minder,’ Mr George Nenyi Andah as the ‘MoMo Brand Builder,’ and Mr Ebenezer Twum Asante as the ‘MoMo Game Change.’

Mr Selorm Adadevoh, the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana Limited, said MoMo enhanced financial inclusion, economic growth, and accelerated development by creating jobs for people.

He, therefore, urged the government to join forces with stakeholders to develop strategies that would leverage the power of MoMo to recapitalise economic potential growth.

He pledged the commitment of MTN to support government’s agenda to digitise the economy, such as the ‘government to people and people to government form of payment’.

Mr Eli Hini, the General Manager of MTN MoMo, said MTN Ghana needed a committed leadership and workers to sustain MoMo when it was launched in July 21, 2009.

He commended staff and all stakeholders including; MoMo agents and customers for sustaining and contributing to the growth of the service.

Over 100,000 customers subscribed to the service six months after it was launched, however, it currently has over 14 million subscribers, out of which nine million were 30-days active users, he said.

Mr Hini said MTN currently had 140,000 active mobile money agents nationwide.

He mentioned fraud as one challenge the network faced with the MoMo service, however, the company had invested heavily to control the canker.

Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance in a speech delivered on his behalf commended MTN for providing jobs for almost half of the population.

He encouraged MTN to work directly with microfinance institutions to drive growth of the financial sector.

Source: GNA

 

The Ghana Statistical Service, Vodafone Ghana and the Flowminder Foundation, an NGO that provides insights, tools and capacity-strengthening to governments, international agencies and NGOs, have embarked on a partnership to produce official statistics using identified telecommunications data to strengthen humanitarian and development decision-making in the country.

Under the partnership, some staff of the statistical agency are undergoing training on how to use data to solve critical problems and inform policy decisions.

The collaboration is aimed at taking advantage of technology to transform the production of official statistics.

Speaking to Citi Business News, a former Government Statistician and current chairperson of the GSS, Dr. Grace Bediako, says the project, which will end in 2020, will benefit Ghana immensely.

“This is part of what we have been calling big data. A lot of information housed in many service providers domain and in this case the telcos and we are working with Vodafone. So, we are hoping that this will help us bridge the data gaps because with the SDGs, there is a lot that we need to inform ourselves about and track; mobility is part of it,” she said.

Data Scientist and Project Manager at Flowminder, Tracey Li says the data will help the country in diverse ways.

“Our role in this project is to strengthen capacity within the GSS by way of providing tools, knowledge and skills to enable staff of GSS be able to process and analyze telecommunications data and incorporate that data into the production of official statistics,” she explained.

Source: www.citibusinessnews.com

 

The state is losing more than GH¢3 million a month to an illegal scheme that diverts international calls into local ones, according to the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications.
Known as sim box fraud, the illegality is perpetrated by Ghanaians and their international partners who route international calls through the Internet and terminate them on local mobile phone numbers to attract local charges.

The mechanism denies the government the necessary revenue from international calls.
Beyond the monthly losses, activities of the fraudsters have also led to a decline in International Direct Dialling (IDD) revenue from as high as GH¢222 million in 2012 to about GH¢56 million, which is projected for the end of 2019, a 74 per cent reduction.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, who made this known to the Daily Graphic in an interview, said the fraudsters were now employing newer and more improved technologies to help mask their locations and make it difficult to trace their whereabouts.

New schemes

He said although the telecom companies (telcos) had blocked about 70,000 SIM cards since January this year, they had also identified a number of new schemes employed by the fraudsters to perpetrate the illegality.

They included bypass, CLI masking and number refilling, both of which had the same effects as SIM box fraud.

“In CLI masking, the offending operator manipulates the calling party number to make it look as if it were a local call,” Mr Ashigbey explained.

That means that telecom operators in the country would not be able to bill the appropriate rate for such transactions, he said, adding that the difference then went to the fraudsters through their international counterparts.

As a result, Mr Ashigbey said, some of the telcos had also adopted advanced technology to ruthlessly deal with the emerging phenomenon.

“Our members have to ensure that we are also ahead of the curve, so that we can arrest these fraudsters, but it requires investments in new technologies, systems and processes to counter the fraudsters,” he said.

Pricing

Asked why the illegality persisted and how it could be resolved, he said as an industry, the chamber had always advocated the removal of the surcharge on incoming international traffic (SIIT).

That was because the fraudsters were currently leveraging and exploiting the arbitrage between the international rate of 19 cents and local rate of 10Gp per minute.

“We have made presentations to the government on the issue on several occasions and are still engaged to ensure that we deal with the issue.

“Within this much liberalised economy, we should remove the $0.19 on all international incoming minutes and allow the market to determine the tariff. We need to take out the arbitrage that currently exists,” he said.

However, Mr Ashigbey noted that based on the constant and continuous research and work by the telecommunications companies, telcos continued to find ways of cleaning up the telecommunications and cyber space in a bid to improve cyber hygiene and make the ecosystem safe for customers.

Clamp down

On the role of the police in clamping down on such fraudsters, the Head of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Dr Gustav Yankson, told the Daily Graphic that although there was an alarming surge in the activities of the fraudsters, a joint effort by the Cyber Crime Unit and the Telecommunications Chamber had resulted in a series of operations to round up the criminals in different locations in Accra.

Arrests

Within the last two weeks, he said, the joint effort had resulted in raids at different locations within Accra, in the course of which four adults were arrested, while two others were on the run.

All the arrests were made in suburbs of Accra, including Alhaji Tabora, Nungua, Awudome Estates and Mamprobi.

Although the police did not give the names of the arrested suspects, Daily Graphic checks revealed the identities of the suspects as Comfort Dede, arrested at Korle Gonno, Emmanuel Nii Tagoe, arrested at Awudome Estate.

The rest are Mallam Bako and Defence Doh, both arrested at Alhaji Tabora, and Richard Wils Kobby, who was arrested at Nungua.

Destruction

In all, five SIM boxes, each loaded with a minimum of 100 SIM cards, were retrieved from the fraudsters.

Asked what would be the fate of the suspects, Dr Yankson said the police were conducting further investigations, after which the suspects would be arraigned.

He explained that due to the fact that the suspects would be charged with fraud, the police needed to ascertain how much their activities had cost the state as of the time they were arrested before they would be put before court.

Dr Yankson sounded a caution to individuals indulging in such illegal activities to desist from them, as the police would find them.

“We are able to track them real time and, per the law, they can face up to 25 years’ imprisonment,” he said.

Source: graphic.com.gh

The government must focus on output tax instead of the current industry specific taxes imposed on the telecommunications industry, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Chamber of Telecommunications, Kenneth Ashigbey, has said.
That, he said, would help promote the growth of the telecommunications industry in the country.
Speaking in an interview with the Ghanaian Times on the side-lines of a press conference to announce the outcome of a Telecommunication Tax Contribution (TTC) survey, Mr Ashigbey said telecommunication sector was saddled with a lot of taxes, which in total constitute 40 per cent of the cost of operations of the telecommunication companies.

He said the industry must not be seen as a cash cow, but a ‘driving horse’ to propel and drive the other sectors of the economy.
According to him, it was important for the government to reduce the numerous taxes imposed on the industry to allow companies in the sector to invest more in expanding infrastructure to make more spectrums available and improve on their services.
He explained that if the industry was supported to grow through tax reliefs and incentives, the government could generate more taxes from the services the industry generated.

Touching on the total tax contribution of the TTC to the government tax revenue in 2018, Mr Ashigbey said the industry last year contributed GH¢2.2 billion.
“Value Added Tax stood as one of the top tax lines of the industry, representing approximately 19 per cent of the TTC in money terms of over GH¢412 million and Communication Service Tax also generated GH¢420 million to government,” he said.
Corporate Income Tax, the CEO said contributed GH¢342 million and Pay As You Earn contributed GH¢64 million, withholding tax, GH¢293 million, import duty GH¢180 million and Surcharge on International Incoming Traffic contributed GH¢115 million.

Mr Ashigbey said the industry last year contributed two per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product and industry players in 2018 invested more than GH¢628 million in capital expenditure and GH¢345 million in other remittances.
The CEO said aside the tax contribution to the State; the telecommunication industry gave 6500 direct jobs and 1.6 million indirect jobs.
Quizzed about the claim of government that the telecommunications companies were under declaring profit, the CEO said the telecommunications companies said no study had confirm that and the Chamber of Telecommunications had written to the Ghana Revenue Authority to provide it with information to that effect if there is any.

He said some of the telecommunication companies were listed both locally and internationally and shareholders were concerned about the bottom lines of the companies.
Mr Ashigbey said the telecommunication companies took their tax obligations seriously.
On the Communication Service Tax, he said members had completed the process to stop the upfront deductions of the CST.

Mr Ashigbey touching about the move to tax Mobile Money said the move would be akin to the VAT on the banking services government abolished in 2017.
Citing Uganda as an example, he said taxing Mobile Money would reduce the uptake of the service.
On the intention of government to roll out a test run for 5G service next year, Mr Ashigbey called for comprehensive policy to bring all sectors of the economy on board the exercise.

Source:Ghanaian Times

 

The African Development Bank and technology firm Microsoft have launched the ‘Coding for Employment’ digital training platform, an online tool to provide digital skills to African youth, wherever they are across the continent.

The platform, launched at the 2019 African Economic Conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, aims to promote a continuous learning culture among young people and build their capacity to shape the continent’s future.

The high-level event drew heads of state and government, ministers and leaders from the private sector and academia to discuss how this new tool and other technological innovations could be used to spur development across the continent.

“The youth employment and skills development challenge is a complex issue that requires systemic thinking and bold partnerships … to address the existing skills gap and link youth to decent and sustainable employment,” said Hendrina Doroba, the African Development Bank’s acting director for Human Capital, Youth & Skills Development.

“The skills training platform launched today is a testament to the impact that such partnerships can achieve and the Bank looks forward to strengthening similar partnerships.”

The platform teaches technical courses such as web development, design, data science and digital marketing and will be constantly adapted to respond to market demand. It is accessible on mobile devices, even in low internet connectivity settings and has an affordable, easy-to-navigate, secured and private interface.

“A defining challenge of our time is ensuring that everyone has equal opportunity to benefit from technology,” Ghada Khalifa, Director of Microsoft Philanthropies for the Middle East and Africa, said at the launch.

“Forward-thinking initiatives such as the digital training platform represent our commitment to helping drive the momentum needed. Though there is still much work to be done, we believe that through dynamic partnerships such as these, we can help build a knowledge-based economy in Africa that leaves no person behind.”

The Coding for Employment Program is a crucial part of the African Development Bank’s strategic agenda to create 25 million jobs by 2025, and to equip 50 million African youth with competitive skills. The Bank piloted the program in five countries (Nigeria, Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire) in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation and Microsoft and is currently developing 14 ultra-modern centers specialized in ICT and entrepreneurship skills trainings for youth.

The goal is to scale up the program to 130 centers of excellence across the continent over a 10-year period. It will create nine million jobs by building synergies with the public and the private sector globally to deliver demand-driven, agile and collaborative skills to empower young people to become innovative players in the digital economy.

The Coding for Employment training platform can be accessed here across 54 African countries

Source: www.biztechafrica.com