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World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck  believes that a new tipping point for South Africa will come in 2013 when those who received Internet access in 2008 are finally confident enough to engage fully with online content.

“The future is being laid across Africa,” says Goldstuck, speaking about the Internet cables currently landing.

“The ability to access telecommunications has been revolutionised and it has a lot to do with the growth in the demand of smartphones but more to do with the increased capacity from cables.”

Goldstuck demonstrates a graph of Internet access for business in Africa taken from the World Wide Worx SME survey 2010. The primary means of Internet connection businesses are using is ADSL, closely followed by satellite.

In terms of planned Internet connectivity for 2010 – 40% of businesses surveyed say they plan to implement ADLS, 26% say they will invest in satellite connectivity.

“The message in those numbers is very simple,” says Goldstuck. “It’s that internet access has become mission critical to businesses across Africa and as a result of that they can’t afford for it to go down and leave them stranded, so as they’re investing in  ADSL and they’re also investing in satellite. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t consider the Internet critical to their business.”

The same trends are true for SMEs in SA, says Goldstuck. In addition, we are seeing a rising curb of unique broadband users in SA. World Wide Worx expects as much as a 50% growth for 2011. In the year 2009 to 2010 SA saw it’s biggest growth in terms of new Internet users ever.

“This is on the back of one simple thing,” says Goldstuck, “the smartphone.”

According to Goldstuck, Vodacom and MTN are both expecting smartphone penetration to overtake feature phone penetration by the end of 2013. Goldstuck expects that as many as 15 million South Africans will have access to the Internet by 2015.

Goldstuck points out that those South Africans will be fully active online by 2020 due to what World Wide Worx calls “the participation curve”. According to observations by World Wide Worx, it takes the average Internet user five years from gaining access to the Internet before he or she is confident enough to fully engage in activities like Internet banking and ecommerce.

As a result of this curve, Goldstuck believes that we will see the real results of the 2008 landing of Internet cables in SA in 2013 and South African Internet use will grow from strength to strength from then.  Goldstuck says that 2013 is when cloud will really come into its own.

“Cloud is heavily predicated by the amount of experience people have and their participation in the digital economy,” he says.

CRM in the cloud is not yet a reality for SMEs in SA according to Goldstuck. The early adopters make up approximately 2%. “The majority of SMEs are still terrified of the cloud”.

Social networking on the rise

Goldstuck gives an illustration of how “facebook” could have existed in the 1950s. It would not have been very user friendly, however and people would probably have resorted to their usual methods of communication.

“Technology needs to evolve to meet the needs of consumers before they embrace it - and we’re starting to see that in the SME space, but the tools are not yet developed,” says Goldstuck. “People need to learn to use them”.

According to Goldstuck there are currently over 4.2 million Facebook users in South Africa – which is almost 10% of the population. He points out that other countries in Africa that are close to Europe and have easy access to an Internet connection to the rest of the world have a bigger penetration.

There are just over a million Twitter users. Even though not all of these are what would traditionally be considered active, Goldstuck points out that you can’t use traditional definition of active users because a high proportion of Twitter’s userbase use the platform to consume info.

In a sample of approximately 18 million people over 16 living in cities and towns in South Africa, World Wide Worx found 33% of respondents use Internet browsing on phones. A further 26% said that they intended to in the future. This means that approximately 55% of South Africans will be accessing the mobile Web.

In the same sample, 22% are using Facebook with their phones, 36% are going to when they are able. Six percent are using Twitter, but a further 23% said they will be using it – they just need to get a phone that is able to or build up the confidence to. Thee percent are using BlackBerry messenger, 24% aim to – 16% of survey respondents intend to get a Blackberry as their next phone. 24% of the respondents already use Mxit, a further 25% want to.

Implications

These results show that students and job market entrants are using social networking on computer and phone. According to Goldstuck there are now more young execs than kids on Facebook.

“The new workforce is a social workforce and executives use social computing,” says Goldstuck.

According to Goldstuck, typically a person working at an SME in SA is still low on the digital participation curve. Only 24% of the businesses surveyed use social networking as a business tool. Goldstuck says this is generally when there’s a younger business owner who understands social media and grasps the significance.

“The time will come when very few small businesses will get away with not having social media,” Goldstuck says.

And that time, according to the participation curve, begins in 2013.