In 3.5 Years, Most Africans Will Have Smartphones

Worldwide, according to Gartner, smartphone sales exceeded feature phone sales in 2013, for the first time — but Africa remains a different story. Informa UK’s terrific Africa Telecoms Outlook (PDF) projects 334 million African smartphone connections in 2017, maybe 30% of the continent’s population. IDC is more pessimistic yet; it figures smartphones are currently 18% of the African mobile phone market, but they expect their number to “merely” double in volume by 2017. The available data seems to indicate that the penetration rate feature phones shot from 6% to 40% of the African market over a five-year period, and I still see no reason to believe that smartphones will do worse, and many to believe that they will move faster.

Read more at Tech Crunch

Hyper-Local Search

As the world grows increasingly mobile in its computing — and advertisers grow increasingly demanding about how they target prospects — the giants of the net are intent on tailing people around town. Google captures location through its Android phones and various mobile apps, while Facebook includes a Foursquare-like service within its ubiquitous social network. With this deal, Microsoft gets extensive access to Foursquare’s brand new tracking system.

Read more at Wired