Speaking at a round table event held by hosting and colocation firm UKFast, Peter Bryant, director at Black Mobile Solutions, highlighted the country’s need to look elsewhere for inspiration.
Bryant said: “The mobile world moves from the East. Japan is way ahead of what we, in Britain, have been doing. Interestingly, America is way behind us, so there is this flow of knowledge that comes across the globe.
“You look at India and China and they are way behind the likes of Tokyo, because the devices they have are cheaper form factors, older legacy devices that we chucked away a couple of years ago, so the Nokia S40 is the dominant device in India.”
Adam Swanson, Business Development Manager of Transalis, added that other areas of the globe end this cycle, highlighting that every device still needs to be taken into consideration when developing apps and mobile solutions.
Swanson said: “The African market is full of mobile phones that have come from the UK or that were used a number of years ago here and people have changed or upgraded, which almost completes that cycle. This has to be taken into consideration too.”
Andy Piper, Developer Advocate at VMware, surmised: “I was in Australia for an IT conference. When we arrived there was a bit of paper which said ‘here are some settings to make on your devices to optimize your network’.
“Basically you are on the end of a very long piece of string from the west coast of the US where the hub of the internet is, so I know they have bandwidth and connectivity issues but I believe they have just the same platforms as we have.
“As far as Africa is concerned, it is almost like two types of nation. One that’s pouring money into a high-speed digital infrastructure. They haven’t had to go through the evolution we have had to go through with copper.
“Then you have the side of the nation with lots of older model mobiles, for which SMS is a significant way of doing business.”
Meanwhile, Eventsbuddy owner Daryl Jay says the emergence of the smartphone proved to be a game-changer for app developers. He said: “Everyone has one now, even children, so that is the market space.
“Apps are being developed with everyone in mind, young and old.”