After months of speculation, Apple finally unveiled its “tablet pc” the ipad. With mixed reactions, many hailed the iPad as an industry-redefining device, especially as an e-book reader destined to save print media.

While others laughed at the name, iPad and criticizing it as an over-sized iPhone.  So what exactly is the ipad, which at the moment has more of a negative opinion that a positive one?

The  iPad does indeed resemble a large iPhone or iPod touch. It has a 9.6-inch multi-touch screen, is a 1/2-inch thick, and is made of aluminum and glass. Like the iPhone, iPad has just four physical buttons. It can run most of the applications in the iTunes App Store, just like an iPhone or iPod touch.

While iPad can run those apps, it has been mainly designed for reading books, newspapers and magazines, surfing the Web, playing games, and enjoying media such as YouTube videos, HD movies, music, photos, and TV shows. You can also use iPad to send e-mail, touch up photos, edit documents and spreadsheets, and view PDFs. You hold iPad in your hands like a clipboard or book.

The iPad has a software keyboard just as the iPhone has. Early reports say this keyboard is fine for basic text editing, but probably isn’t ideal for complex word processing. Apple is offering two external keyboards to help with that (extra costs).

All versions of iPad have built-in Wi-Fi, while three versions also have 3G wireless capabilities &it should be possible to make VOIP and Skype calls from iPad, as it now is with 3G and 3GS.

Now the iPad may be an over hyped product lacking quite a bit

Notable features lacking on the iPad include a camera or webcam, SD card port (though Apple is offering an adapter for SD cards), support for Flash, and true system multitasking.

It’s surprising that iPad lacks a camera, maybe we will see on in the next generation iPad? Multitasking should have been part of the iPad as it is a “tablet pc” using one app at a time tends to become very annoying. This though is likely a feature in the next version of the iPhone operating system which powers the iPad. If iPad supported multitasking now, it would likely have far less haters.

The lack of Flash will be iPad’s major shortcoming for many. Most popular websites make use of  flash on their sites.

So, just a slight sum up of what we know about the iPad so far. What does it mean for the African market? Will we use it in our offices? Will we use it to read our daily newspapers? Our e-books? How about introducing it into our schools?

Really, I do not see any of that happening any time soon. Priced at $500 its too pricey for the African market. Many of us have the more pricey iPhone but its usefulness is more than that of the iPad.

Would be extremely interesting to hear what you guys have to say about it, so feel free to post your views and thoughts too.

The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine at work and he happened to mention that he was working late on 31st  December. He also mentioned to me that he had ordered a meal from steers at 7PM and that same meal was delivered to him at 9.15PM. 2.15 hours later!!

I think that the Kenyan fast food industry has a lot to learn, honestly they are not a fast food industry, they are a slow crap food industry. Come on we have all experienced it. You walk into your nearest steers or nandos joint, pay some extreme prices for a meal and wait upto 30 minutes to get it. What part of that is FAST? When you do finally get your meal it is nothing compared to what you expected.

The other thing I have noticed personally is the hygiene and cleanliness of these joints, when they start as a new outlet they are super clean, a few months down the line, the floors are black, you can see fat/oil stuck on the cookers the tables are never wiped and flies are buzzing all over the place.

I really like how fast food joints such as KFC, Pizza Hut & McDonald serve you as a client. As soon as you get to the counter you first receive a friendly smile and as soon as you have placed your order your food is served to you in a tray. 1 minute tops. These outlets are maintained really well too and are always clean.

This all leads to Quality Control, and the reason as to why these brands do not want to open outlets in Kenya, simply because Kenyan’s do not like maintaining and taking quality seriously. Staff are never trained well and not enough money is put back to maintain the outlet. I had done an article on Quality Control sometime back -  Customer Service & Quality Control in Kenya.

Outlets like KFC spend millions of dollars a year perfecting customer service and quality control just so that their customers can be happy. No wonder they have over 600 Million customers yearly.

For me only one fast food chain does manage quality really well and also do live up to the term fast food and that is Mcfries. Mcfries has managed to maintain the same quality off food and service at all it’s out lets but yet lacks on the cleanliness.

The main fast food outlets in Kenya need to really style up, have their staff trained properly and should invest back into their outlets by maintaining them and coming up with new menus. They also need to look into ways of how they can speed up their services at the counter & deliveries and also become more efficient.

I must admit i was quite amused when i saw the video of the E72 a few weeks to its launch! Nokia have created a device that’s just so amazing and more importantly, useful! and its quite fashionable too….

This is the first Nokia phone with an optical pad. It’s similar to the mouse pad of a laptop. Its like the D-pad of a Samsung i780/ omnia series. It builds on the success of the E71, an equally competent device.
Its very interesting that the enterprise devices (business focused focused in layman’s speak) from Nokia would be quite successful. From the large, Nokia 9000 and 6000 series they have evolved into classy, highly useful devices. The E-series started off with the E50, E60 and E61. Originally these phones were received with much scepticism. People wondered what direction Nokia was taking. At the time, the 9300i, 9500 and the very successful, still in use device 6310i was favoured by Kenyan business people. At the time, blackberry was a concept yet to be embraced and packet data based internet (gprs) was just launched. They released into the market E61i, the slider E65 and the 9500 replacement, the E90. from there they released the E62 (3g less E61), the E51, The E71, the E66, E52, E72, E71x, and E55. Enough about the E series history, lets get to the phone shall we?

The minute i held one i was pleasantly surprised. The first thing that hit me was build quality of the device. high quality plastics and metal. The back panel/battery cover is made of metal. It has grooved lines but generally its a smooth feel. the front rim of the phone is also made of metal, as are the main keys (call accept/end, selection and cancel keys). The area around the ear piece and the camera also has metal, grooved and smooth.
The thumb board/keyboard buttons are high quality plastic. There are 56 key presses (buttons, 52 if you make the navi-key one multifunction button, 39 on the keyboard, 13 main keys, 3 side buttons, plus the power button). Thank goodness they made the power key the same colour with the body, unlike the E71/E66’s bright red keys which looked really off with the colour schemes they had, except on the Rare red and silver E71 .Its quite light for a device made of these materials, and its quite slim as well. it’s a pocket friendly size, unlike its older brothers the E61/61i/62.

When you leave the phone on a surface, its quite magnificent to look at! there’s an option to have the light from the navi-key pulsate. This makes the device look like it’s breathing like a living creature. i find this to be an interesting feat.

To the core of the phone now. The E71 runs on an operating system called S60. This is Nokia’s platform based on symbian that actually means “series 60″. its a smart, operating system that’s been with Nokia since their first sliding phone, the 7650. Over the years it has become a highly competent and stable OS. It currently is the market leader in terms of smart phone operating systems. So the E71 one was great, it had lots of software available on the market and it was quite stable. The E72 is no different.

When you operate the phone you get this feeling of fluid movement, similar to the new 6th edition S40 Nokia and Sony Ericsson A200 platform. As in the menu has nice transitions. It no longer feels phone like and boring. menu movement is smooth when entering and exiting from main menus and sub menus. This is great, it makes the device feel even more classier. The tools menu has been renamed “control panel” where you have your various options. You can organize the main menu as a list or grid. Personally, i like it in grid mode. Something i’ve always liked about symbian phones from Nokia is the ability to download its own internet settings based on which network you’re in. For instance, the phone was browsing 2 minutes after the phone was installed. The phone detected, installed and applied the necessary Internet and MMS (multimedia settings) on its own. Another thing i like is the email application. when you launch it, it asks you if you have an existing account or if you want to create you’re own (presumably ovi based). Assuming you do have an existing one, all it asks is for your email address and password then it does the rest, by searching the internet and installing the necessary settings. THAT, was impressive. Its a feat windows mobile based smart phones had but never really worked out, but Nokia did a fantastic job with that. the email service was up and running in a few minutes. Mind you the phone is blackberry capable meaning you get instant mail as it comes, but requires you to have a constant internet connection on, which consumes the battery. Also included is Lotus messaging, which means that if your office uses lotus based applications, the phone will synchronize with them.
Many applications have been installed, such as quick office (documents viewer), world mate traveller (a globe application that shows flights, currency rates etc.), games (which i doubt are touched by professionals?) and one that people have been enjoying, GPS.
GPS is a feature smart phones have been picking up. Its a good thing to see that feature being installed on modern phones, its quite handy! how, you ask? Well, recently Kenya was mapped and is now available on Google maps. With the implementation of GPS, you can calculate route distances, routes themselves, see various roads from various views (satellite, terrain or drawn) find your current location to the exact spot, have navigation by walking or driving… that list is long! Is it useful? yes it is! For those of us who aren’t well acquainted with the city, it becomes handy… By the way when you’re driving it can show you the shortest route to use. I tested it from Lang’ata to upper hill, inner upper hill near the British high commission. it worked flawlessly. It gave me turn by turn direction (in a very nice lady voice), and even showed me what services were there in upper hill. By the way that was using the phones built in application called Nokia maps. Google maps is just as good (and free) and has a wider variety of options.GPS is good for walking and driving so this is a great feature for those who love the outdoors.
You can download extra symbian or Java j2me applications from the internet. At the moment compatibility of previous software found on the E71 seem to be an issue but developers should be addressing the issue currently.
Themes can be set to the device, which changes the wallpapers, sounds and icons. Of course the ones installed are business themed, which are quite nice, but you can download others from the internet. On the personalisation topic, there is the option of switching desktops. This is a popular feature on the Linux operating systems. Basically, the concept is to switch the phone’s modes. For instance you can have an official mode where the phone’s interface is business oriented, all the relevant mailboxes set, and sounds, and another interface that is more personal with a picture of a loved one, custom ringing tones and so on. When you select the modes icon, it will switch to another desktop. In layman’s language, its like having two different devices in one but operates on the same phone number. I quite like this feature…

The entertainment department. The phone comes with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack meaning you can use you own, regular head/earphones to listen to music. Needless to say that in recent times Nokia have really improved this department! Business users are also audiophiles. Like myself for instance, i love music! the phone hides the music player in standby so its never really closed. and it stores your music in such a way that it never reloads the library until you synch or do it manually when adding new songs. The phone has a 4gb card in the box, so videos are also catered for. It has the capability to show album art too… Whilst listening to music the equalizer settings really change significantly. Might i add that the included earphones are excellent for music! not too much bass or too little. then again tastes vary. For quality assurance i tried it on another model, the very loud Nokia 5130 XpressMusic. They sounded the same! Although i stress again, tastes vary. The radio reception was quite good with most stations as well. Videos have the option of parental control. At least they thought about the device and what children would watch unsupervised. Though really isn’t that why the security code is there? Overall the entertainment department is excellent! You will not be disappointed.

The Internet browser is carried over from the E71. This excellent browser loads rich HTML pages As you’d have it on a computer. It does consume a lot of data, so either have lots of airtime or make sure you’re on a post-paid tariff. I tested the internet on Safaricom’s 3.5g network. Needless to say the download speeds were amazing! However if you feel the main browser isn’t good enough or is too complicated, opera mini is easily available. They also have a more sophisticated browser for the device called opera mobile but it functions similarly to opera mini. One is Java based, the other designed for symbian with an.sis extension.

The camera is A 5 mega pixel unit. It has the autofocus feature, and bright flash and 30fps (frames per second) video recording, which makes the already useful device even more useful! The lens is a fixed one with digital zoom. Will optical zoom be added to business devices? Not likely. It shoots excellent photographs, which is brilliant for capturing rare moments. Lack of a dedicated 2 stage camera key is my only issue. The photos shot at night seemed to have some noise in them. In the day time some photos produced a hue of amber in some lighting conditions. For a business phone though, this camera packs a punch!

With connectivity, the E72 handles bluetooth and wireless connections with ease. Wi-fi usage was quite handy, all you need to do is detect the wireless network, enter the SSID (passkey) and when it’s authenticated it gives you a simple option called “start browsing” which opens the main browser. With wireless usage the battery lasted around 3 and a half hours, which isn’t bad compared with the E71’s 2.5-3hours. The device is able to project audio via bluetooth to wireless hands-frees (ear pieces) or bluetooth headphones. Sounds produced were clearly. This drains the battery quickly though. However there is a bluetooth on/off shortcut key on the keyboard which requires a long key press to activate/deactivate.

Calling quality is brilliant! reception of calls was quite clear However comparing it with the E71 in terms of ringing volume the E72 is bettered by the E71. But this isn’t an issue, it’s still loud! Putting it on loud speaker mode during a call, it was still clear.

This device is Priced at Ksh37,999. I would pick this device over the E72 because For the price you get a lot more! And its smaller than the E72 too… Generally, my take on this device is this, It clearly outclasses All its rivals. If you’re looking for a good smart phone, select the E72. It’s more than a phone, this is a tool!

review period: 20/10/2009-02/01/2010

This should definitely rock the Internet service market and should have other ISP’s preparing their marketing teams to come up with new products.

This Barely a day after I posted about ISP’s not heating up the competition. I take my words back as Zuku have done just that with the introduction of bandwidth in double digits (Mbps) and a massive price drop.

Zuku who have share holding in TEAMs and available bandwidth from Seacom, have mentioned that they have 50Gb of bandwidth available to sell to the market compared to Access Kenya’s 10Gb, 5Gb from either fiber provider.

I am now surely looking forward to increased bandwidth and increased price drops in the coming months.

Come in fiber connectivity to Kenya (and the rest of Africa too) and ISP’s had started coming up with products for SOHO & home users, prior to the completion of the fiber ISP’s had started selling these products to the home user with promises of increased speeds and lowered charges.

Some ISP’s packaged too good to believe offers as bait and fished in quite a number of home users and SOHO users. For about 6 months these clients waited with anticipation to finally have INTERNET, something to use and take full advantage, but alas!! When the fiber was connected and bandwidth now in abundance, the ISP’s turned their backs on their clients.

ISP’s now had a different agenda – Here is what we propose to you, “our loyal clients” since we now have cheap bandwidth, we will in good faith “double your bandwidth” and since we need to recover our investments, we will not lower the costs.

Now to me, that is a definite raw deal, no matter what hot shot CEO of whatever large ISP says. Yes you invested, you invested in your business, to move forward. But does that mean you deny Kenyans to what they have waited for, for so long? Does it mean you make Kenya wait another 3-5 year from moving completely into the digital era? Have you people ever heard of making money and recovering investments on a turnover basis? I think not.

Example – KDN CEO Kai Wulf mentioned that he does not feel Kenya is ready for the Internet, simply because KDN has only sold 20% of their capacity and still continue to pay for the unused 80%. Now, why not lower your charges & reach the masses? Do you really think Kenya is not ready for the Internet? Think again! Ever since the arrival of Fiber, no one has got more users connected than Safaricom.

With lowered equipment costs, and provision of free data bundles, they have won the hearts of many. However these same users later complain on how they cannot take full advantage of the media on the Internet due to data capping. In turn data capping turns to be a really expensive affair.

Safaricom has at least 1million data subscribers, reach out to these people, provide them with broadband (reliable broadband) services for as little as 2,000shs ($30) a month, which would still be higher than the average charges in Europe, America & Asia . You get just 10% of these 1million subscribers and you are making 200million shs ($2.65million) a month.

Safaricom still works out really expensive, so as an ISP you would still have the competitive edge, yes my above estimation is just a rough indication and has not taken many other costs into consideration, but as typical Kenyan businessmen who are trying to recover investment FAST, you are making on the minimum a 300% markup on bandwidth.

It would be lovely to hear your views and thoughts out there, this has been a long standing debate. Please lets all share what we feel and do correct me where I am wrong.

The best description for customer service would be – it is a service offered to customers before, during & after a purchase, and quality control – maintenance of quality of goods & services.

I do not really think Kenyans take these two seriously. Primarily on the third stage of customer service. Once you have purchased an item or are subscribed to a service, you will never get good customer service. I have had this issue with various large “blue chip” companies. If it is not rude customer service, it will be an inefficient customer service that just never gets back to you. And yes all of you know what I am talking about because you have all at some point gone through the same phase of frustration, most probably in the service industry.

I have yet to understand why they fail on customer service, do they not want us to go back to them with our business? Sometime back I walked into a shop to look for something and no one at the shop gave me any attention for almost 15 minutes, this really set me off and I went to the managers office to complain. The manager did nothing about it and asked me to look around for what I was looking for. Now, how would they expect me to ever walk into their business again?

Customer Service really should just be practiced along:-

1. Answer your phone – When someone calls they want to to talk to a real person no some fake recording. Get a decent call forwarding. Or an answering service. Hire staff if you need to and make sure your calls are answered with a smile.
2. Listen to your customers – What is worse than when the person you are complaining to is not really listening to you? Listen to your customer and respond positively.
3. Train your staff to ALWAYS be courteous, helpful & Knowledgeable - Courtesy goes a long way. Get your staff trained on how to handle queries professionally and have them be knowledgeable. Customers do not really like it when they are told ” I do not know, let me get back to you”.
4. Do NOT make promises unless you will keep them – reliability is one of the key elements of customer service, if you say you will have the TV fixed by Friday, have it fixed by Friday. Nothing disappoints a customer more than find out a promise was not fulfilled.
5. Deal with complaints – No one likes complaints, but you are bound to get them at some point. Deal with them, and if you are able to give it an extra bit of attention, you will have a happy customer who will bring their business back to you.

These are just a few of the elements of Customer Service that could have your customers smiling and recommending you to their friends & family.

Many a times you find that a new business has started off really well; great customer service, great products & services or just great restaurant with good food, atmosphere and service. But as time goes things start to fall apart, and quality becomes a thing of the past. Once again all of you out there have definitely at some point or the other experienced this too.

Quality control heavily relies on customer service, this is because if you are listening to your customers and acting upon it, then your products and services are going to meet their expectations. Maintain the quality of your goods and services and continously keep setting the bar for your standards higher and you are always going to have happy customers.

Your views & comments are welcome as always.