BizTechAfrica posts, “Google and Orange have signed a partnership that aims to provide access to new Google services to users across Africa.”
As per the deal, Orange’s 60 million African mobile customers will be able to stay in touch with their Google services and Google users will be able to extend their network by using SMS-based services.
In a statement, Orange and Google said the partnership would use Orange’s SMS platform to bring Google’s services to African customers.
Broadband services in Africa are negligible at present and, hence, this marks an important step forward that would facilitate access to the growing mobile Internet market in Africa.
By the end of 2010, only 1.4% of people in Africa and the Middle East had access to Internet connection as against 62.5% for mobile services.
Pamela Clark-Dickson, of Informa Telecoms & Media, posts in her blog, “According to Informa, the penetration of smart-phones in Africa and the Middle East by end-2011 will be just 11.3% and 19.8%, respectively. The statistics for mobile subscribers in Africa at the end of the 2nd quarter of 2011, was 577.6 million and the corresponding figure for the Middle East was 226 million.”
Dickson believes that in order for an Internet company to reach the widest possible audience in Africa and to a lesser extent the Middle East, it is going to be essential to use SMS as the access mechanism.
Gmail’s SMS Chat service, which is already available in Senegal, Uganda and Kenya will eventually be launched across all the countries in Africa and the Middle East where Orange already has a presence.
Four more African countries – Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Conakry and Niger – will be able to avail the services of Gmail’s SMS Chat service in the coming months, and, the service will be launched in Egypt on a trial basis in partnership with Mobinil.
The services proposed under Google SMS are only the first stage of this partnership. Orange and Google are now exploring ways of bringing other Google services to the whole Orange customer base.
The partnership delivers mutual benefit to Orange and Google: Orange will generate additional traffic and revenues from the SMSes sent and replied to by those of its subscribers who use the Gmail SMS Chat service, meanwhile Google will secure additional market reach.
The Internet company already offers Gmail SMS Chat via 29 other mobile operators in Africa and the Middle East, but the tie-up with Orange gives it access to another 19 networks, representing 60 million subscribers in total.
Commenting on the partnership, Xavier Perret, VP Strategic Partnerships, Orange said, “By bringing the full potential of the mobile Internet to our customers in Africa, this is a step forward in Orange’s, ‘Digital Coach’ strategy. We are delighted to work with a major brand like Google and we know that by innovating together we can really change the role mobile technology plays in our customers’ lives”.