Mxit, the South African mobile social network, has today announced the first phase of its expansion strategy for the emerging market with the launch of Mxit in India and the release of Mxit 7 for Android and BlackBerry users.
Available for download across more than 8,000 mobile devices and tablets, Mxit will provide the growing 550 million feature phones users across India with the ability to affordably use their basic data-enabled feature phone like a smartphone, with advanced functionality for chat and accessing apps and games. The application is both fast and data light allowing users with even the most basic 2G connection to benefit from an immersive social mobile chat experience, at a much lower cost than the average SMS.
CEO of Mxit Francois Swart said, “Launching Mxit in India was a natural strategic next step, which allows us to continue building on the success we’ve had with the application in South Africa. Expanding our emerging market footprint enables us to bring our innovative technology to the masses, making the ‘smartphone’ experience affordable to every consumer, regardless of the device they use”.
Sam Rufus Nallaraj, CEO of Mxit India Pvt. Ltd. commented, “India is currently the world’s largest feature phone market and continues to grow. We’re excited at the prospect of enhancing the lives of Indians by providing a functionality otherwise not available to low end handset users, as well as replacing the reliance on SMS on feature phones with a cheaper, more engaging chat alternative.”
The expansion into India comes coupled with the release of Mxit 7 for both BlackBerry and Android users.
Vincent Maher, Chief Product Officer of Mxit commented on the new release, “We’ve really focused on speed and simplicity for these two platforms. We’ve taken away the home screen for BlackBerry users so they can access chats faster and added sound clips to group chat. On Android we’ve introduced fast account switching so that users can now create multiple profiles and switch between them quickly and easily.”
Staff Writer