Tech Week in Pakistan (Issue 20: 29th June)
This weekly newsletter focuses on the most important new developments within Pakistan’s Technology Sector. To receive this newsletter on a weekly basis subscribe to our mailing list (no spam ever) or follow me on Twitter @adamdawood. Previous instalments of the newsletter can be found here.
Mobile Subscribers Update — by Ovum
A presentation by Matthew Reed, of Ovum, predicts that Pakistan’s mobile subscriber base is set to grow from 144m users to 178m users by the end of 2019. Despite high speed mobile internet services already in the market after the recent auction, it seems that Ovum believes GSM subscribers will still continue to grow until the end of 2015, after which their decline will begin and be overtaken by W-CDMA users by 2019. LTE or 4G users are set to grow slowly at first, but are expected to see very fast growth from 2018 onwards.
Also a study titled “Connectivity Scorecard 2013” has given Pakistan a ranking of 2.06 out of 10 in terms of mobile broadband connectivity. Both these results shared at a conference in Islamabad.
Connected Pakistan — Broadband Predictions by Ovum | Connectivity Scorecard | ProPakistan
MoIT Releases Performance Report
The Ministry of IT, has released its annual report on the progress in the past fiscal year and its plans and ambitions for the upcoming year. We saw 4 major points of action in the report, apart from their review of the last years spectrum auction. There are no such deadlines for any of the projects mentioned.
The Universal Services Fund (USF), an organisation funded by the telecom industries, and run by the MoIT, is focusing on providing public access to the underserved and rural communities with access to computers and internet. Other focus also include laying of fiber optic cables across Tehsils headquarters in Pakistan and all towns with over 15,000 people.
The Cybercrime bill has been prepared by local experts, and sent to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) for review and is expected to pass through into law this year.
The government also seems to be focused on establishing ecommerce payment gateways, with proposals being sent to the Ministry of Finance.
The Ministry is looking to setup technology parks in the country. All though there has been no information regarding the number of technology parks or their locations, they are in talks with the World Bank to help fund these facilities.
Mobile Apps
EatOye, one of the largest food delivery services in Pakistan has just launched its iOS app, and says it will be releasing an Android one shortly. This step is a very important move for the company as the major player in this segment, FoodPanda says that 65% of its orders are now from mobile devices. Coincidently, FoodPanda has also updated its app this week, which is a lot more user friendly and has the ability to process online payment, although no restaurants currently offer this facility.
Lamudi, Rocket Internet property portal has also gone mobile and released its mobile app. The app is a world-wide release for the property vertical and hopes to capitalise on the growing mobile user base. It would be interesting to see if Zameen.com, which recently raised a large round of funding for expansion in Pakistan also develops and released a mobile app in the near future.
EatOye iOS App | Lamudi App | Zameen.com vs Lamudi
Other News:
Disruption Ahead: Mobile Wallets Soon to Disrupt Conventional Bank Accounts | ProPakistani
Mobicash Footprint Expands to More than 35,000 Retailers in Pakistan | ProPakistani
PakWheels.com reveals automobile industry trends | Pakistan Today
BizClout Launches E-commerce Content Management System Designed for SMEs | ProPakistani
Foortal is now SuperMeal | Facebook
Discovering Excellence in Technology | Tribune
Pakistani Startup Flashcall ready to mobilize the power of missed calls | TechinAsia
The Death of the Urdu Script | Ali Eteraz
KITE signs a new partnership | TechJuice
Telenor wants to promote local App Developers with Apportunity Competition | ProPakistani
Mobilink Discover — NUST Business Plan Competition 2014 Launched | ProPakistani
Bank of Punjab, ZONG and Inov8 Join Hands for Branchless Banking | ProPakistani
[mc4wp_form id=”1663"]