You often hear is said that “mobile is the Internet.” It happens often to be literally true.
Facebook points out that 2.2 million Kenyans now use Facebook every day, and 4.5 million each month. In another example, 7.1 million Nigerians use Facebook daily and 15 million are active every month.
Almost all these people are coming to Facebook on a mobile device. That includes literally 100 percent of Nigerian monthly users and 95 percent of Kenya’s monthly users.
Overall, Facebook’s active user population in Africa has grown 20 percent to 120 million in June 2015 from 100 million in September 2014.
More than 80 percent of these people access Facebook from their mobile phones.
Some observers might still believe some as-yet-undiscovered “killer app” is needed to drive consumer adoption of the Internet. At least, one hears such comments from time to time, in the context of thinking about how to rapidly boost use of the Internet in many developing countries.
Others might counter that the use cases already are clear enough. But there often are cases where people have not yet had a chance to use apps that will drive demand for Internet access, or other cases where some creativity about prices and packaging has not been fully pursued.
Count Facebook among those who do not worry about whether people will find value in Internet apps content, services and capabilities.
