Instant Messaging Overtakes SMS Texting For The First Time

Mobile instant messaging has overtaken SMS texting for the first time. According to a report by Informa, messages sent using services such as iMessage and WhatsApp now outnumber texts. They said that globally in 2012 19 billion messages were sent over the internet with apps every day, compared to 17.6 billion texts. Analysts expect that number to continue to rise, with up to 50 billion daily chat messages anticipated by 2014. Online messaging works using a mobile data connection rather than the separate SMS service, which dates from before mobile phones were able to reliably access the internet. With apps like WhatsApp and Skype, chats are not charged per message but by overall data cost. But SMS might not be finished just yet - Informa said that 21 billion will be sent daily by 2014, up to 4 million more daily messages over 2012. However it seems likely that users relying on SMS will increasingly be located in the developing world, where smartphones are less common. The result in developed markets like the UK could be fresh issues for mobile operators, who are less likely to entice new customers with generous text packages. Up to £15 billion was lost in potential SMS revenue in 2012 alone, according to another research report by Ovum, according to the BBC. Below: some of our favourite AutoCorrect fails, via DamnYouAutoCorrect and HuffPost US.

GSE to launch SME Alternative Market in May

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) will in May launch a new market platform for Small and medium enterprises with high growth potentials.

Dubbed the Ghana Alternative Market (GAX), it would accommodate companies at various stages of their development, including start-ups and existing enterprises, both small and medium.
Mr Ekow Afedzie, Deputy Managing Director of GSE, announced this at a press conference to highlight the performance of the Exchange in the first three months of the year.
"We are now ready to roll. We have the oversight committee and all the necessary support to start," he said.
Mr Afedzie said the GAX-SME Listing Support Fund, set up with initial contributions from Ghana Venture Capital Trust Fund, GSE and African Development Bank, would be used to support the cost of raising capital for the companies to be listed.
He said that the enlisted companies would enjoy an initial public offer financing and underwriting directly or indirectly by the sponsor.
Businesses must have a minimum stated capital of GHC250,000, at the time of listing and at least 20 shareholders at the time of the public float.
Touching on the integration of West African Markets, Mr Afedzie said the objectives to establish a larger market for issuers, brokers, buyers and sellers of securities through the harmonisation of rules and the creation of a common trading platform.
He said the four exchanges involved in the integration- the GSE, the Nigerian Stock Exchange, Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres and the Sierra Leone Stock Exchange, had taken a significant step to inaugurate the West African Capital Market integration Council.
In addition, there was the signing of a Charter by the Chief Executive Officers of the four exchanges and the Director Generals of the various regulators.
Mr Kofi Yamoah, Managing Director of the GSE, said the GSE would aggressively pursue the listing of more companies on the Accra Bourse to increase the depth and breadth of the market.
He urged government, as part of the agenda to increase its revenue, to reduce holdings in listed and unlisted companies and also allow state owned enterprises to go into the market to enable the public to buy into them.
The GSE Composite index recorded 44.49 percent return in the first three months of 2013 compared with a gain of 8.03 percent in 2012.
Volume traded jumped to 68.12 million at the end of March this year from 37.19 million shares, a year ago while valued traded was up to GHC71.5 million from GHC18.29 million.
Source: GNA

KOKO KING

 
 story by kofi
 The passion of Albert Osei, the man behind Koko King, for food packaging, has revolutionized the traditional koko breakfast for many of Accra’s professionals. The local porridge, koko now comes in more auspicious packaging and for a little over a one Ghana cedi, professionals can purchase a full breakfast of bread, sugar, milk and of course, koko, properly and healthily packaged and delivered to their workplaces. Mr Osei’s evolution to become the man behind koko’s latest iteration follows an unusual trajectory. After earning, a Masters degree in Finance from a prestigious university in the United Kingdom, he spent some time working for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Like many other Ghanaians abroad, his dream was to come back home and set up a business. While his business concept had not been fully developed, he was reasonably certain it would involve packaging. When he eventually made his move back home to Ghana, Mr Osei scouted the market to determine the shape his business would take. As a fan of the porridge, Mr. Osei was drawn to koko. His plans to transform the koko ‘industry’ began to evolve as he studied the market. “Hausa koko caught my eye because it was a basic thing to cook and deliver to customers. It was also something that I loved and I used to buy it every morning, just like everyone else. So it struck me that this was something that we could do. We could change it and make it better. I am sure I was not the first or only person to think that. I believe thousands of people have looked at Hausa koko and thought that the delivery could be improved. So I think the most important thing I did, was to try it; it was to have a go and see whether the market was ready.” Meanwhile, pressure was building from family and friends who thought he was insane to ignore offers from banks and other “reputable” institutions and to seek to risk his comfort and livelihood on what may have seemed to be little more than a pursuit of passion with dubious benefit. “In fact, I had second thoughts at some point, as you do when people are bombarding you. Everybody who has gone into private business will recognize that feeling. But then I thought that if I went into a paid job, it would be very difficult for me to come out and do this. I knew that if I got used to the perks and the comfort of an assured income, it would be extremely difficult for me to come out and pursue this dream I had; this burning desire to package local foods. So I decided to sweat it out. And sweat it out we did.” In October 2007, Koko King was registered. November to January 2008 was spent on market and production research. A firm believer in standards, Mr Osei had to be sure that he would be available to deliver and exceed the current standards in the market. The result was the assembling of a three man team – a cook, a driver/salesman and the King himself operating out of a backyard that they had fitted out to fit the required health and safety standards. Soon, it was time to actually hit the market. “We did a trial at Millicom from an ice chest in an open car booth. We didn’t have branded cups, then. We did that for a month, selling at a cedi for a cup and some bread. We saw the interest in Tigo. People were buying it. We’d sell 20-30 cups a day. From there we moved to Amal Bank [now Bank of Africa] at Adabraka. That took off, too and they referred us to other companies and we moved on from there.” Koko King was born and it has never looked back. Naturally, the early years were challenging. Mr Osei says the company only broke even sometime into its third year. This has required perseverance that he believes is critical to the survival of not only his business but businesses, generally. “There is a strong desire to make it work so we find solutions to all the issues. Our mission is to build a brand. We didn’t come to it with the view to just sell koko; we knew we were building a complete brand. So we took a long term view. We knew it would take us at least 5-6 years to build a sustainable brand so at the moment, we don’t even think we are there yet.” To build this strong and sustainable brand, Mr Osei relies on the strength of the product and the satisfaction of customers. At the moment, while concentrating on capacity building, Koko King has shunned mass media advertising while ensuring that the clients they have are pleased enough to recommend the products to others. And that is basically how Koko King has grown. That and leaflets, office visits and samples. Koko King has been built purely on direct marketing and word of mouth, Mr Osei says. “That is essential to what we believe is the foundation of a solid brand.” Solid is an appropriate adjective for the business that Mr Osei has built. While selling koko may be some distance from the gilded offices of investment and finance, he hasn’t left his guiding principles behind. He brings an inflexible discipline to the running of his business. While some may have done otherwise, he has studiously refused to invest the returns on his own comfort. He drives a small Tata van that is also a company car. “You can’t use the small money you are getting to buy cars and land for yourself. You have to invest in the company. You have to invest in your workers, hire the right people, invest in storage, etc in order to build a strong sustainable business.” That discipline is paying off. The firm’s capacity is improving. They operate out of expanded premises and the company’s cars, obvious brand ambassadors, are now becoming recognizable images in Accra’s cityscape. The banks are beginning to take notice and smiling at Koko King, albeit cautiously.Just two years ago, the story was a little different. “Two years ago, we were struggling to cover our wages around Christmas but the banks wouldn’t help us. We had had a delayed shipment and were thus in a difficult situation and this could have killed us. In the end, it was a friend who stepped in with some money to enable us met our commitments.” That is only one of the challenges. “I think getting the right people is the biggest challenge. …….. If you can get the right staff, then you are on to something.” Koko King now employs in the region of a hundred people at various levels of the business. Perhaps, with the business growing, Mr Osei must be on to something. To engender small business growth, Mr Osei suggests that government eases taxes on raw materials; grants to help in buying some products and equipmentto enable price maintenance and also encourage them to employ more people. For Koko King, though, the growth has only just begun. The brand is in its infancy and Mr Osei has admirably great ambition for his company. With his eyes firmly set on building a franchise comparable to Kentucky Fried Chicken or McDonald’s in Ghana, he knows he cannot rest until, well, he can rest. To him, that is the ultimate measure of success. “I don’t quite see myself as successful. I see myself as making a difference. Success would be when the company is able to run on its own. When in five years you come and see that the company is running well without me, then maybe we can call it a success.” Till that happy day, Albert Osei is quite happy to enjoy what he is doing. “I love to deal with the customers. They call me and we interact all the time. They give us praise and when they are unhappy, they tell me, too. To date, I take care of customer service myself; I don’t allow anyone else to do that and I encourage customers to contact me directly whenever they want to. Customer service and standards, that’s what I do.” For a King, that may be an unconventional, yet endearing way to handle his business.

British teen hits jackpot, sells app to Yahoo

Seventeen-year-old Nick d'Aloisio devised a content-shortening programing while studying for his exams

(Credit: Paul Sakuma/AP/dapd)

LONDON (AP) — One of Britain’s youngest Internet entrepreneurs has hit the jackpot after selling his top-selling mobile application Summly to search giant Yahoo.
Seventeen-year-old Nick d’Aloisio, who dreamed up the idea for the content-shortening program when he was studying for his exams, said he was surprised by the deal. As with its other recent acquisitions, Yahoo didn’t disclose how much it is paying for Summly, although British newspapers suggested the deal’s value at several million dollars.
“I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly,” he wrote on his website, before thanking his family, his school — and his venture capitalist backer Li Ka-Shing — for supporting him.
Summly works by condensing content so readers can scroll through more information more quickly — useful for the small screens of smartphones.

The deal announced Monday is Yahoo’s fifth small acquisition in the past five months. All of them have been part of CEO Marissa Mayer’s effort to attract more engineers with expertise in building services for smartphones and tablet computers, an increasingly important area of technology that she believes the Internet company had been neglecting.
Although the Yahoo acquisition won’t close until later this spring, D’Aloisio said the Summly will no longer be available. Summly’s technology will return in other Yahoo products, he said.
D’Aloisio will work for Yahoo in its London office — in part so that he can complete his high school exams. Two other Summly workers will join Yahoo at its Sunnyvale, California, headquarters.
D’Aloisio is younger than Yahoo, which was incorporated in March 1995.

story from Shalom
By Marissa Mayer

START A SMALL BUSINESS

A lot of small businesses are coming up in recent times but interestingly a lot of them tend to collapse on the way while a few survive and very few grow into big companies. The graduate unemployment rate is very interesting whiles the general unemployment rate in fascinating. The need for small start ups become more important in such an era. These are some guide to starting a small business.

•  Have an something in mind. This can be a product you have always wanted to make, or a service you think the society needs. It might even be something people are even not aware they need yet, probably because it does not exist and need to be invented.

•   Define your goals. Know what you want. Know if its financial independence, something small and sustainable, that you love doing and want to derive a steady income from or what? By  knowing these earlier you know where to start from and where to go.
• Create a business plan. In every thing you have to plan and business in not and exception. A business plan helps to define what you think you need to launch your business. It summarizes the sense of your business in a single document. It also serves as guide or aid  for investors, bankers, and other interested parties to use when determining how they can best help you and to help them decide whether or not your business is viable.

writing your business plan

MAKING DECISIONS ON THE STOCK MARKET

Hundreds of people make money each day on the stock market and in that same respect hundreds make losses. All the losses and gains are dependent on the decision they made themselves or with the assistance of their brokers. But either with or without the help of your broker, your gains or losses are uncertain until they are realized. The hedge fund manager George Soros came out with a philosophy that relates to our thinking, how our thinking affects the world around us and the reality. He made clear the fact that our thinking is partial and distorted- name that fallibility- and the distorted thinking tend to affect the situations they relate to since false views lead to inappropriate actions. And he have an example of treating drug addicts as criminals leads to criminal behaviors of drug addicts.

So do investors has to be careful the kind of moves the take on the stock. Its difficult and fatal to predict the market but you can use basic characteristics of companies to choose the right stock.

• Sales
• Advertising
• Management
•  P/B ratio
• P/E ratio and some others we will discuss later

Note: do not follow the masses, do not depend much on the news and rethink about what you broker tells you.
Sales: You can monitor a companies sales and  the sales is very likely to impact on total revenue and translate to profit. For example I calculate the sales of an insurance company I invest in by looking at the number of car per 100 cars I see as a walk along the street that has the starker of the company I invest in. You can also interview vendors of products you are interested in. For example you can ask a FanIce seller how the product is moving for different locations and draw meaningful conclusions.
Advertising: Just as sales, you can easily see how advertising is widespread and how the product is popular among the population. See kids every where playing with their favorite adverts are likely to translate to sale the you know management is doing something right.
Management: Effective management is very obvious in many ways. If management are committed to research and innovation then you know they are doing something right that will in no time pay dividend. Also the management structure tells you if business is likely to do well or not. For example you can easily conclude the bureaucratic leader are likely not to produce results relative to a more decentralized management structure.
P/B ratio: It is simply the price to book ratio of the company. Thus if the price is high the book value the ratio will the greater than 1 which implies the company is selling at a premium whiles if the book value is higher than the price the ratio is lesser than 1 which implies it is selling at a discount. In other words these ratios tell you how investor are valuating stock and it is either over valued or under valued. If management are doing well and other factors are favorable undervalued stock are like to make gains in the future as in investors realize they are doing well. These ratios you can get from to stockbroker.
P/E ratio: This ratio represent the price to the earning which means if the price are too high than the earning the stock makes the ratio is higher whiles if earning are high the prices the be lower. As you compare the ratios of each stocks the lower ones are likely to be preferred. Meanwhile investors should not loss sight of the fact that stock that pay low dividend or no dividend are likely to have flying share prices.  These ratios you can get from to stockbroker.

First quarter of 2013 stock performance on the Ghana Stock Exchange (in perspective).

The stock market has made significant returns in the first quarter with BOPP topping the list of gainers with groundbreaking 134.29% gains, followed by MLC 92.31%, ETI 83.33%,GOIl 61.90%, FML 54.37%, PZC and CALL both making 50%, SCB 36.00% and some other significant gains by other companies like GGBL, TOTAL and UNIL. Meanwhile SIC made a significant loss of -11.76%. Even though BOPP made the highest at the end of the quarter, ETI was the most interesting among them to play with since at a point it made 133.33% gains before declining sharply to 83.33%.

 Recommendations 

1.Long term investors should consider SIC and ETI
2.Short term and low risk takers should consider TOTAL, BOPP, CAL, SCB, UNIL, GGBL, GOIL and FML