The massive corporation hopes to intensify its engagement within the continent.
Intel Corporation has recently revealed its intentions to enhance its African engagement by making strategic investments in local startup businesses in order to help to promote software and mobile app development within the region.
The growth of the internet economy in this continent has been considerable and is handing the company an opportunity.
According to the vice president and general manager, EMEA at Intel, Christian Morales, the primary reason behind Intel’s choice to plant its feet more deeply in the local mobile app development is the growth that the online economy is seeing there. He explained that the company is making highly strategic investments of its capital into startup businesses that have been growing their experience over the last three or four years and that now require a “world-wide footprint”.
Investments into these mobile app development businesses will be of a minority nature.
The goal is to allow the startups to have the capital that they require to expand, without actually taking them over. According to Morales, Intel is making this move because “we see the potential in local applications and software in Kenya and other countries in Africa.” This announcement was made alongside the company’s unveiling of its two new microprocessors.
Those new microprocessors are a quad-core mobile Atom and a duo-core 64 it Atom. They have been launched with the promise to help to boost the experience for mobile users in terms of performance, speed, and energy consumption. Intel has placed high hopes in this tech in order to give it the power it needs for a more significant share of the mobile market space. The company, said Morales, was encouraged in this arena by the success of its Yolo smartphone, which was released in Nairobi in 2013.
Beyond its intention to invest in African startups, Intel has also shown interest in working with local mobile app development companies through its Developer Zone Program. That program provides local software and application developers with free support and tools by way of training to create their apps based on Intel’s own architecture.
