Global Marketing News – 29th May 2015
Portuguese app store Aptoide to expand into Asia
The Portuguese app store Aptoide has announced it plans to expand into South-East Asia.
Aptoide is the third largest Android app store in the world, after Google Play and Amazon.
It differs from Google Play in that app developers can create and manage their own channels, similar to YouTube, and that its rules for inclusion are more relaxed.
It is most well-known in Europe and the US, but in the last 12 months growth has been strongest in Asia, with India, the Philippines and Indonesia making it into the list of top 15 countries in terms of downloads.
In response to this increasing demand in Asia, Aptoide plans to open an office in Singapore within the next 3 months, and are also in a round of investment, with some Indonesian companies showing in interest in investing in them.
Aptoide will not be the only alternative Android app store in the South-East Asian region, it will also face competition from local app stores such as Oomph, MoboMarket and Jalan Tikus.
Yandex.Money no longer requires users to register
Russia’s largest mobile payments system, Yandex.Money, no longer requires users to register.
Previously, users had to create an account in order to send money using the service.
Yandex.Money is the most popular mobile payments app in Russia, with the number of payments going through the app increasing by 50% in the last year.
The Yandex.Money app is available for free on iOS, Android and Windows phones.
East Asia has the world’s fastest broadband
A recent study performed by Ookla, a US-based broadband and diagnostics company, has found that East Asia has the world’s fastest broadband speeds.
The tests revealed that Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan scored 1st, 2nd and 4th on the list of hot internet connections.
Ookla measured Singapore’s average broadband download speed at 122.4 megabits per second, followed by Hong Kong at 102.9 mbps and Japan scoring 82.1 mbps.
The tests which were conducted in May 2015 found the global average download broadband speed is 23.3 mbps. However, Ookla has noted that the results are based on tests performed by Internet users within 480km of Ookla servers, which means their rankings are focused on connection speeds in major cities and don’t reflect broadband speed in rural parts of a country.
At the top of the mobile download speed list is China with 27.4 mbps, followed by Latvia, New Zealand and Denmark.
Indian ecommerce site Snapdeal buys MartMobi
Snapdeal, one of the biggest ecommerce sites in India, has bought the mobile technology company MartMobi.
MartMobi builds mobile websites and apps, and Snapdeal hopes that its acquisition will help to improve its mobile website.
Many Indian internet users access the web primarily through a mobile phone, with the Indian smartphone market being one of the fastest growing in Asia.
Snapdeal has said that currently three quarters of its sales are done through mobile, and it hopes that with an improved mobile experience this number will increase further.
Snapdeal is not the only Indian ecommerce giant turning its attentions to mobile. Two of its competitors, Flipkart and Myntra, have gone one step further by shutting down their websites altogether to drive all customers through their apps.
Microsoft launches wi-fi in rural Kenya
And finally, Microsoft has launched 15 low-cost wi-fi hot-spots in rural Kenya as part of its 4Africa project, which aims to get more African online.
The wi-fi hotspots are in and around the rural Kenyan town of Nanyuki, and will allow users to stream content and browse the internet while they are connected to the wi-fi.
A Microsoft spokesperson has explained how it works, saying: “The Internet service is made possible by utilising TV White Spaces, the unused portions of wireless spectrum in the frequency bands used for television broadcasting.”
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Immanuel Simonsen
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