Innocent [at] HiPipo.com

In this day and age, data customers are searching for an enriched experience from the telecom providers. HiPipo.com as a leader in delivering Uganda content would love to see our visitors and fans having very good internet access in order to access all our services. The Uganda telecom operators such as Orange, Warid, Airtel, MTN and UTL are largely advertising enhanced data networks with some stating that they are offering 3.75G. Essentially we would expect users of these services to have very fast data services, browsing & searching & reading email will happen in very few seconds, streaming of video would be top notch fast.

Despite the recent trends of the said improved networks, Quality of Service (QoS) that influences the degree of satisfaction of a user of the service is still seen to derail Uganda operators. Using this year’s survey, HiPipo Consulting, Research and Advisory arm intends to measure customer’s satisfaction of the telecom data services and customers views on quality of data services. We invite you to complete the survey below to express your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the data services you are currently using.

Participating in this survey enters you in a draw to win an android phone or android tablet!

Innocent [at] HiPipo.com

Facebook urged its employees in August to switch from iOS devices to Android so that flaws in the company’s mobile app could be addressed more rapidly.

Now, photos have emerged of posters hung around the Menlo Park, Calif. headquarters of Facebook, which further urge employees to make the switch that they’re calling ‘Droidfooding — as in testing your own product.

The posters boast that by 2016 Android devices will consume the market and outsell iOS devices, a projection from the International Data Corporation. Below the chart is the Facebook helpdesk’s email address, which will help employees “switch today.”

Will Android win this Battle??

Share your views in the comments section below.

Source: Mashable, Techchru

Innocent [at] HiPipo.com

YouTube, Korean Music

Gangnam Style by Psy tops UK chart

In other developments, Rapper Psy became the first South Korean musician to reach No 1 in the UK. Gangnam Style broke into the top 40 two weeks ago at No 37, a month after its release, and made it to No 3 last week.

Sudhir Ruparelia

Net Worth

 

$900 M As of November 2012

 

Sudhir Ruparelia runs one of Uganda’s largest privately owned conglomerates, the eponymous Ruparelia Group. It owns hundreds of Ugandan properties, hotels, a country club, a chain of foreign exchange bureaus, a business that grows and exports roses and Crane Bank, the country’s second largest commercial bank. Born in Uganda, Ruparelia moved to the United Kingdom with his parents at age 16 after President Idi Amin expelled all Asians from the East African country in 1972. While in the U.K, Ruparelia worked small jobs. He returned to Uganda in 1985 with $25,000 in savings with which he started a commodities trading business and Uganda’s first foreign exchange bureau, the basis of the much larger business he owns today.

Rank	Name	Net Worth ($ mil)	Age
1	Aliko Dangote	$12,000	55
2	Nicky Oppenheimer & family	$6,400	67
3	Johann Rupert & family	$5,700	62
4	Nassef Sawiris	$5,500	51
5	Mike Adenuga	$4,600	59
6	Christoffel Wiese	$3,700	71
7	Othman Benjelloun	$2,750	80
8	Patrice Motsepe	$2,650	50
9	Naguib Sawiris	$2,500	58
10	Mohamed Mansour	$2,200	64
11	Onsi Sawiris	$2,170	82
12	Miloud Chaabi	$2,100	83
13	Yasseen Mansour	$2,000	51
14	Youssef Mansour	$1,950	67
15	Desmond Sacco	$1,400	70
16	Anas Sefrioui	$1,350	55
17	Stephen Saad	$975	48
18	Sudhir Ruparelia	$900	56
19	Jim Ovia	$825	58
20	Shafik Gabr	$720	60

North-America

Basketball junkies rejoice: the NBA Development League is headed to YouTube.

The North-America based National Basketball Association (NBA) and YouTube announced on Tuesday that at least 350 games from pro basketball’s minor league will stream LIVE this season via the world’s most popular video-sharing network YouTube. It’s purported to mark the first — but surely not the last — time a pro-sports league has used YouTube as its main outlet to broadcast games.

“As one of the world’s most popular sports with a broad roster of top prospects, the NBA D-League is a perfect fit for the YouTube platform,” Claude Ruibal, YouTube’s global sports director, said in a release. “With our broad global delivery across all platforms and devices, providing live and catch up NBA D-League games and highlights will make this exciting content easily accessible to a whole new generation of basketball fans.”

Fans can catch games live on the D-League YouTube channel, and via a YouTube video player embedded on NBA.com. On-demand replays of finished games will also be available on the league’s channel, as well as individual team websites.

While it’s likely that only hardcore hoop-heads will want to watch a bunch of former college stars with little chance of future NBA stardom, the partnership is an interesting one for non-basketball reasons.

The NBA became YouTube’s first sports-league partner in 2005 and, with more than 966 million total video views, and 980,000 subscribers is its most popular sports channel.

On other social media channels, NBA has at least 14,883,764 Likes on their Facebook Page and 6,298,265 Followers on Twitter.

Source: Mashable

Kampala, Uganda – 20th November, 2012

HiPipo Consulting, Research and Advisory together with HiPipo Digital Media have conducted Uganda’s Midsize Companies Internet Presence Survey, Case Daily Monitor 2011, Top 100 Midsize companies. The survey aimed to establish the rate at which Uganda midsized companies have embraced the web with the minimum requirement being having a functional website. The yearly Daily Monitor Top 100 list of midsize companies was chosen as the case to use since this list is drawn with comprehensive financial research hence is a good representative of the financial health status and operational efficiency of Uganda’s midsize companies.

The results of the Internet Presence Survey, presented in this report, indicate that 60 of the top 100 midsize companies lack functional websites. By functional this survey refers to a website with at least 5 navigable pages. 40 of the companies have Good/Ok websites though most are not updated and many lacked professional look and feel to match their brands. With this sample, we can conclude that even as the internet and web presence is growing, Uganda’ midsized companies still have much to do to fully embrace the web to a level where all the top 100 midsize companies can have functional and well updated websites as a minimum for their online presence.

Of the Daily Monitor, 2011, Top 10 Midsize Companies, only three have Good/Ok websites, two have Poor websites either not developed or lacking at least 5 pages whereas 5 companies including the company that was the number 1 of the top 100 midsize companies list completely lack a website.

Download Uganda’s Midsize Companies Internet Presence Survey Report Here

About HiPipo

Consulting, Research and Advisory

Our Consulting, Research and Advisory focus on Business and Technology that spans web, mobile and social.  We provide proprietary research, consumer and business data, custom consulting, events and online communities with advisory to guide leaders in Business, IT, marketing and strategy. We are responsible for the strategy, design and development of some of the most influential digital experiences such as HiPipo.com. We work with big and small companies to build ongoing, continuous relationships with consumers through effective use of social media and mobile platforms. We host, design and develop web and mobile applications.

In telecom circles, the talk has for long been 3G and now 4G is gaining significant coverage. Less is talked about 2G networks which are still serving the people of Africa diligently. Even as we want to advance to the next generation of networks, reality is that many Africans do not have 3G or 4G capable phones and it may take several years for the majority to acquire these phones. From Africacom Awards being held in South Africa it has been shared that 4% of connections in Africa are Smartphone connections, but growing numbers of people are accessing new services and apps with feature phones. MTN says “You can’t switch off 2G as long as most people can’t afford high end devices” and Google says that “cost and knowledge are the biggest obstacles to African app development”. Applications that can use 3G data will take longer to penetrate the bottom of the pyramid population which cannot afford current generation of smartphones and data packages for content rich applications.

In the US National wireless carrier AT&T plans to move completely past 2G wireless connectivity by 2017, a recent 10-Q filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission revealed. UK based networks are also working on a timeline to switch off 2G though this may not be as fast as the US.

Given the economic status of Africa, it may take several years for real 3G capable phones to sink and hence it may take longer for networks still running 2G technologies together with 3G or 4G to switch off 2G. May be this could be a decade ahead, let’s say 2022! We shall love to hear what the plans and projections of operators in Africa are. Uganda operators such Airtel Uganda and MTN Uganda with large country network coverage should be still largely depending on 2G for voice and some data services whereas the 3G network is deployed for fast data services.  Do they have a plan/projection yet to switch off 2G?