Prefix taps into Africa’s digital realm
Prefix Technology, a software design company is developing mobile applications and content management tools for Africa’s online publishing companies. In SA, the company connects 1 in 5 people to a digital platform.
Walter Penfold, Prefix Technologies MD
Prefix Technology was founded in 2002 by Sam Hutchinson and Josh Adler to develop web and mobile applications for SA’s online media companies.
The company has two main digital products – Preditor and pMailer. The applications enable people to read content wherever they are, says Walter Penfold, Prefix Technologies MD.
“Preditor was built for online publishers to house their central data and push the content to the web and mobile applications.
“Preditor can push to any channel including web, print, mobile and e-mail. The two applications were created for iPhone and iPad applications – polity.org.za and mio.co.za.”
“These are news reader applications for publishers. We are planning to launch BlackBerry and Android applications,” says Penfold.
“Preditor allows online publishers to move into the digital world,” says Penfold.
Since its inception, the company has assisted online media publishers to move into the digital world,” says Penfold.
African strategy
Preditor is ideal for online publishers from Africa’s emerging markets.
“Most are still focused on print. We understand the challenges of moving into online. Our primary focus is to tackle publishers in those regions, says Penfold.
Penfold says the company is eagerly waiting for Africa’s high penetration of smarphones and credit card usage.
As soon as there’s a high uptake, Prefix will enter the Kenya market.
“Kenya‘s M-pesa is ideal for Prefix as it uses digital currency.”
Penfold indicates that Prefix business is based on virtual payment methods and “Africa’s credit card payment method is quite small” to expand their business.
Prefix has targeted 5 high online density regions to run its pilot projects including India with about 150 million online users, Turkey with about 35 million online users, the Philippines, Brazil and Argentina.
“As for Africa, we have to wait for an aggressive smartphone penetration. Our current project is to build more mobile e-mail platforms. In addition, pMailer has launched the adopt-a-school project to provide all African school with 6000 free e-mails per month – to communicate with teachers, students and parents.
Spam
“pMailer was developed for global online publishers. The service acts as an email and sms marketing communication platform. It provides traffic statistics and manages e-mail campaigns,” says Penfold.
“About 90% of all e-mails sent out is considered to be spam. This costs Internet Service Providers (ISPs) a lot of money. Prefix has adopted an anti-spam policy in order to tackle this problem.”
Penfold is proud that the company’s IP was developed in SA using local programmers. The company’s email solution currently sends over 500 million emails and sms messages annually for numerous South African companies. By 2012, Prefix Technologies hopes to send in excess of 1 billion messages per year.
Bontle Moeng
