An application available for free download to your cellphone called MXit is making communication via cellphones fast, accessible and dirt cheap.
Instant messaging service MXit cuts the cost of an SMS, priced at up to 80c to send a one-word message such as ‘hello”, by 100 000 times to just 0,0008c.
More than one million South Africans — mostly under the age of 25 — are using MXit. New users are signing up at the rate of 12 000 a day.
There are no set-up or sign-on fees, but users need late-model cellphones capable of running on GPRS or 3G technology to use MXit, which was developed in 2003 in Stellenbosch by Herman Heunis.
Once logged on it is possible for people to interact with other MXit users as well as with online chat communities, such as MSN messenger, ICQ, AOL messenger and Jabber. Both parties must be logged on to the MXit network.
Because one only pays for the data or information that one sends and receives and not for the access to the internet, using a service like MXit becomes ridiculously cheap.
On average, a person pays R2 per megabyte to their cellular service provider. The size of the MXit application is 110KB, which means you’d be paying roughly 22c to download it to your cellphone.
Heunis said the ‘intelligence” of your cellphone determines the price of sending messages. ‘On average, the older phones will result in a data cost of about 1c to 2c per message, whereas the message ‘hello” on a newer generation phone will cost you about 0,0008c,” he said.
The MXit website claims its mission is to secure about 2,5% of the world’s GSM phone population in the next three years. That’s about 50-million people. And with four million log-ins per day, 1,5-million South Africans are already using it.
Similar technology is very popular in China, where 150-million use Tencent QQ, a similar programme to MXit.
Heunis said he was very excited about the large number of people signing on to MXit because it presented new advertising opportunities.
When a user logs in there is a five-second colour display that Heunis hopes will be sought by advertisers. ‘We are convinced that advertising on this personal, global device will become huge business and we have positioned ourselves for this,” he said.
MXit also makes a profit by selling its own currency. ‘We created our own economy called MXit Moola, which we use to sell services such as our chatrooms to our users,” said Heunis. One Moola costs one cent.
But Heunis said that Vodacom, MTN and Cell C need not worry about MXit taking away their youth market.
‘International research shows that mobile instant messaging acts as a communication incentive, so we do not see ourselves as a threat to any other product. I think we are currently the largest generator of GPRS data traffic in South Africa — so they shouldn’t be nervous. We are providing more tools for the community to communicate. We are here to enhance communication,” he said.
Claudia Botha, a matric student at Randpark High School, said that during exams she spends up to four hours on MXit a day ‘just to talk to friends”. She said her monthly cellphone bill decreased by R100 since she has been using MXit and that now there is no excuse for her friends not having airtime.
But Heunis said he did not think that MXit was addictive.
‘Like anything that is free, some people will overuse it — MXit does not advocate or condone the use of cellphones during school hours and encourages all school pupils to chat on MXit only when it does not impinge upon their school or family life. If users do not act responsibly and find a balance, parents and teachers should step in,” he said.