blog entry

Apple has for years ignored a bursting market with burning credit cards here in South Africa.

A growing number of South Africans have come over to the Apple way of things, seen the light of simplicity and security of a semi-closed Apple system. The growth has been admittedly through a mixed origin. Some have wanted Apple products badly, and since they were not yet released in this country they would import these product at stunningly inflated prices. All for a chance to experience the latest tech from the Newton headache.

And then the headache really starts. As soon as the glimmer and gloss of your new iPod, iPhone and iPad wears off, and you finally get yourself connected to the iTunes store, that's when the flaw in Apple's marketing plan (if they even have one for South Africa) becomes apparent.

No Games. No Music. No Movies. No TV Shows. So basically everything that the iTunes stands for is "not available for purchase in your region".

Oops!

I've seen the posts on Apple's discussion forum, but be careful, try to post anything these about the South African situation, and they will summarily delete either your posts, or simply the entire topic. Wow. They spend all that time on making sure you never find out why these items are not available for the South African market.

Games

So why are games not available. Having been a registered developer and learning to code in Objective C, and wanting to write minigames for the iPad and iPhone, I investigated why there was no Games category in the South African AppStore. I did a little digging.

Obviously, I knew that physical disc-based games in South Africa needed to be rated by the Film and Publications Board (FPB) of South Africa, as I've had a PS3, XBOX360 and PSP gaming consoles. This is a government directive which states that physical media games need a rating for parents to identify the games' content type to make informed decisions and to prevent kids from picking up adult-themed games in stores. This is similar to the PEGI (Pan European Gaming Information) and ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board) in America.

I then proceeded to call the Johannesburg head office of the FPB. I spoke to a manager of the division and he explained everything to me. In fact he said that even though a game rating process costs R2000.00 per game once-off, this process is can can be deferred, when a large amount of smaller games are sold as in the Mobile environment as WAP (wireless access protocol) downloadable games. Typically phones like Nokia, Motorola and other WAP phones run Java and this enables games to be downloaded and executed on a variety of phones. Nokia also has their own store to sell web games called the Ovi Store. Both the Ovi Store and WAP online advertisers are in arrangement with the FPB and basically games are not individually rated and the rating cost per game is omitted. In addition, because the online stores and/or phones already have some type of parental restriction in place, this translates to the online store and prevents kids from downloading games with a setting higher than allowed, making the need for the classification unnecessary. 

So Apple can simply follow the route that has already been laid down by other mobile game resellers, but no, they prefer to leave the Games section completely removed from the South African AppStore. So, when you buy your iPod, iPhone and iPad, you cannot run any games on it.

The only alternative you have is to get a US/UK account, where you get your "friend" (aka online store) to gift the credits to you, which you then redeem on your US/UK account and then you can buy games. In fact then you can buy any other media type too: music, videos, movies, TV shows, etc.

Music

Then we move onto music. Well I've heard the rumours and also the hearsay, that the South African market's licensing is just not allowable for Apple to be able to enter, but I spoke to a representative of RPM Music, and he also has an iPod and explained to me that there is nothing standing in Apple's way to license music in South Africa. Actually he cannot see any reason why Apple doesn't yet sell online. Other providers like Musica and Nokia are also selling online music, so it doesn't look like a licensing issues, as someone like Musica is a very small company compared to the size of Apple.

Movies

Hmm... Now I'm very confused. It looks like if it's valid for music, then why not Movies. Actually we only have a distributor model for movies, so Ster-Kinekor and Nu Metro release movies here and I see no reason why Apple cannot become a third alternative channel.

TV Shows

Oh brother, this one is a nail in my coffin, as this one is the one I'd really want to see happening. I hate advertising and TV, so for me, I'd prefer to buy the episode 1 day after it is released, so I can watch the latest shows instead of waiting for DStv or SABC to show them — since I don't even have any TV subscription.

Books [updated]

Also, iBooks has now fallen into the same situation. Here the books are copy-protected with Apple's Fairplay DRM, but there are no commercial books, except for the free Gutenberg ones, available on the iBooks store. This means that there is yet another application and media type that is unused.

 

In Conclusion

I think that most of my friends agree that I'm pretty much an Apple salesman and I pretty much know most of the product backwards (ps. I even had an Apple Newton Messagepad in 1996), as I'm a bit of a techno-geek. This makes it really difficult for me, because I love the technology, but I absolutely loath the fact that the games, music, movies, TV shows and books are not available here in South Africa.

In fact we're not the only country in this boat. Many African countries, Eastern European and South American countries sit in this same black ocean.

So what to do?

There doesn't seem to be much reasoning for Apple decision of acting like a black hole in developing markets. In fact, we're probably regarded as a backward nation, with no infrastructure, and we'd probably make a bad royalty investment. 

The only real answer for our locals here in South Africa is this:

Just get that UK/US gift card redeem system going and then you can benefit from the latest games, music, movies and TV shows until Apple decides to grace us with their presence.

It's not the best and easiest answer, it's just one that works.

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