When people ask me who is iROKOtv’s competition is, my answer is always the same. The Market. But who is she? What does she want? What taxes need to be paid for safe passage? Which lambs need to be sacrificed to appease her? Who is this entity who competes with my wife for my time and intellectual bandwidth?
The population of Sub-Saharan Africa is ~800m. PayTV subscribers across DStv, CanalSat, GOtv, StarTimes, AzamTV, ZapTV et al are ~16m today. There are ~200m internet users in SSA. Internet users are growing faster than PayTV subscribers. For all intents and purposes, by 2020 there will be 400m smartphones in SSA. PayTV households are projected to grow to 25m during the same period.
The combined MNO (mobile network operator) revenue for West Africa is about $20Bn. That is about to come under intense pressure as their collective revenue bases migrate from incredibly profitable voice and sms, to data. The most popular apps in every SSA country are communications apps. This is ...