TAPIWA ZIVIRA
According to Opera Software’s latest State of the Mobile Web report, www.newsday.co.zw comes third after international sites Facebook.com and Google.com.
“The country with most local websites in the top-ten list is Zimbabwe, with four out of the 10 spots being local sites, with national top-level-domains. NewsDay, a news site, leads the pack in Zimbabwe,” reads part of the report.
Alpha Media Holdings Editor-in-Chief Vincent Kahiya said:
“This is an endorsement of the initiatives that we have taken to enhance the presentation of our content through the adoption of multimedia strategies. We will strive to continue innovating and revamping our platforms to promote more interaction with our readers and advertisers.”The development comes as the NewsDay online team was awarded the prestigious Most Innovative Newsroom accolade at the Telkom Highway Africa New Media Awards last year ahead of other high-traffic news sites across Africa.
Locally, NewsDay also leads on its social network platforms with over 276 000 Facebook likes and more than 34 500 followers on Twitter.
AMH Online editor John Mokwetsi said:
“We have had amazing content and dedicated journalists. Our winning formula has been understand the reader; respect and engage the reader. Our digital first strategy is now in our DNA and it shows in the impact we have made. The online team, helped by our amazing print editors and journalists has been leading. We have no other way, but to follow the trends and setting them.”The report also notes that although smartphones are also making their way into the mobile devices used to access the Internet in Africa, basic feature phones are still popular even in countries that have high Internet penetration like South Africa, Uganda, Egypt and Kenya.
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In Zimbabwe, Nokia X2-01 and C3-00 are the most used phones and the trend is almost similar in other African countries.
Fourteen years ago only 50 000 had access to the Internet in Zimbabwe.
This has since increased to 5,16 million of which about four million access through mobile phones.
Zimbabwe’s mobile penetration rate has reached saturation level. On a continent where fixed broadband only reaches 0,3% of the total population and active mobile broadband usage has increased fivefold in three years, internet users on the African continent access the internet primarily through mobile devices. And, when they access the web, they use tools such as the Opera Mini and Opera for Android browsers.
NewsDay employs several cutting-edge digital initiatives that allow constant interactivity with readers.
Among the initiatives is the #AMHVoices platform where readers and citizen reporters can interrelate directly with the online team by sending news about their communities. #AMHVoices has seen the normally unreported news from some of the remotest parts of the country, finally getting a platform.
Opera is the developer of the most popular mobile web browser, Opera Mini. Opera Mini is mostly preferred as it automatically optimises Internet data usage to as little as 10% of its original size using compression servers.
In February 2014, the consumer base of the Opera mobile browsers had more than 259 million unique users.
In all, 41% of the total users of the Opera mobile browsers are using smartphones to browse the web. Compared to February 2013, the total number of Opera mobile browsers users grew more than 25% year over year.
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