Drew Cogbill | Thesis Blog

Google invests in Mobile Planet

Mobile telephony is already popular in Africa, and has seen significant growth over the past few years, particularly in countries like Kenya. SMS is clearly a very important technology that provides access to the majority of mobile subscribers. Mobile Planet’s expertise with SMS related technology and mission to “empower the African people with information” make this a very exciting partnership for us. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on how things go!

The New York Times had an article about the emerging environment of mobile phone innovation in Nairobi a few days ago: “Inside Nairobi, the Next Palo Alto?“.  I’ve read elsewhere that the article came out of the journalist attending BarCamp Nairobi, which I mentioned in a previous post.

It also mentions Google’s Nairobi office.  Google must certainly be interested in Kenya, and Africa, as an enormous future market for services, or they wouldn’t be investing in infrastructure and research there.

Google and the other software developers in Nairobi are primarily focused on expanding what it is to interact with the internet.  In emerging markets where mobile phones will vastly outnumber traditional computers for the foreseeable future, the mobile phone has the real possibility of being the most often used way to interface with the web on Earth.