Reaching The Youth Market Through Mobile Phones, has nothing to do with Great Apps

There are plus minus 38 million active sim cards in South Africa according to World Wide Worx and out of this number the majority of mobile phone holders are teen and youth accounting for 55% of the mobile device market share.

This 55% comprises of the most active and technology savvy or proficient audience of 10 to 25 years who are regarded as generation Z. Before we can ask the question: Is there a lack of cutting edge Apps in the country, the question should be out of the 8 million active smartphones in the country who uses them and for what?

In my personal opinion the majority of the 8 million smartphone owners are in the 26 to 50 years age bracket and whose idea of a phone is basic use

1. Make and receive voice calls

2. Send and receive text

 3. Send emails (only if I’m not in the office or not in front of my laptop)

4. Occasionally listen to music because I don’t have an ipod

5. Basic social media functionalities (tweeting, wall-posting and opinion sharing on facebook)

The first lesson I was taught by my mentor was that: ignorance is creating a product where there’s no demand for it or creating demand while there is not enough product.  As a youth marketing specialist I have the liberty to interact with the technical proficient youth with an extensive curious mind to navigate their way around any new social platforms and simple feature phones they use. My take on the matter is that if the youth formed part of the 8 million smartphones users market I believe there would be demand for great Apps, ranging from games, educational apps to music apps.

Linking lack of Apps with skills shortage in savvy developers makes it sound as if there’s a huge crises in the software development industry and now the matter should be addressed by labor unions led by the youth league marching to the UN’s or G 8 offices on a sunny day to seek intervention on the snowballing problem affecting the country.

Hell no there’s no skills shortage of savvy software and programs developers in the country, I have had the chance to work with some of the country’s creative developers who continue to build great computer programs and gaming and music based Apps, but their only challenge is the lack of platforms to use the Apps apart from RIM owned BlackBerry and Apple Inc owned iPhone which are dominant and top of mind smartphone brands at the moment.

Reality is that there's what's called being “a step or two steps behind” that’s what South African developers are facing, when we were celebrating websites overseas developers were building mobi sites, while we were building mobi sites and web based instant chats applications overseas developers had already mastered smartphones instant apps like WhatsApp (Andriod) and BBM (RIM).

I’m of the opinion that the best solutions are not discovered from the “HOW” question but from the “WHY” question.

Instead of us focusing on how can brands reach the youth through smartphones and Apps,while knowing that out of the 38 million plus active sim cards in the country 55% are youth with majority using feature mobile phones not smartphones. I believe that the best solution of not alienating this market of future consumers who will run the technology space in a few years (that’s if there won’t be the Armageddon prediction 11/11/11). During the marketing mix or strat plan brands should be asking: why do we need to use Apps to reach the youth market whom a majority of them don’t own smartphones.

I’m not sure of the actual stats, however based on my assumption (which is my “democratic” right to assume considering that our government seem to give tenders and political positions based on assumption on delivery). Ooops coming back to the App issue and moving on swiftly: Only 14 percent of the youth market of all mobile-phone users have smartphones, so there’s not much point targeting teens through app stores.

But the up side is that with the right team and digital and mobile advertising know how brands can still reach the youth because plenty of normal phones that the majority (55%) audience uses also access the mobile Internet, download and play music and even the most basic cell phones are able to download simple content such as ringtones, ring-back tones and wallpapers.

So from where I stand the answer to the App question and how to reach the youth slowly seems to be a no brainer.