With above average mobile phone infrastructure in the region and mobile penetration having gone past the 50 per cent mark, the race is on for the next frontier, ecosystems and applications. This has been evident with Virtual City's launch of their Hewani Application store. Hewani will host both free and paid mobile applications for various platforms including unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) and SMS based applications, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), feature phones (Java applications), Android, Blackberry and iPhone devices. Since its first launch last Wednesday at the CIO 100 Annual Awards and Symposium, Hewani has been demoed two more times, including a demo on Monday evening to developers at the iHub and mLab.

Virtual City's Chief Executive Officer, John Waibochi says that he is not finished with the launches, with more launches planned for Kigali, Rwanda and launches for vertical segments such as manufacturing and transport.

"Hewani will be our platform to go to the rest of Africa, we are expecting developers to come and do a lot of consumer type apps. There are a lot of people with ideas who are not necessarily software developers, we are also targeting them and if they have a client base they can take it, they can also come on board. Our model will be an aggregation model where we allow all platforms and multiple forms of payment with the aim of making transactions seamless for the customers" said Waibochi.

Waibochi said that Hewani will distinguish itself from other existing and established application stores by "providing unique tools and services for Africa." As mentioned earlier, Hewani will also be unique in its offer of SMS based applications, accessed by typing in a code such as *138# and WAP applications for low end phones. Major app stores such as the Android Market, Apple's App Store and Getjar do not provide such applications.

An SMS application creation wizard that creates applications in less than 10 minutes was demonstrated to the developers at the iHub. Applications for such SMS apps will include voting and large scale communication, such as in the supply chain where a distributor can communicate with retailers. While USSD is important and commonly used in the African market, access has been limited due to the challenges in obtaining and paying for a USSD service - in Kenya, half of the revenue goes to the mobile operator with 60 per cent of the remaining half going to the firm proving the service.

Virtual City will be hosting its own applications on the platform, though this will mostly be around supply chain automation. At the moment , existing apps from Virtual City are targeted at the transport sector and include DhahabuTaxi - a taxi service, Coast2Coast - a bus ticket booking service, ShillingiAir - airline ticket booking and Jienjoy Safari - tour package planning.

Mega applications from Virtual City will see the firm building template applications for applications which can be replicated in a sector. Template apps, also known as white label apps, will need branding and data for them to be operational. A bus ticketing template app will allow any bus service to put their logo and then plug in their fares database.

Hewani will offer a variety of channels from which developers can charge for their applications, including free applications, application purchases, regular application subscription, feemium applications where an application is obtained for free though require payment to activate further features and pay-per-use where an application is billed every time it is used.

The firm is still negotiating with payment partners for integration of payments. This include banks and mobile operators . Waibochi says that they are already working on an agreement with Equity Bank . Mobile operators are expected to take a 5 per cent cut on mobile payments, though this will vary from operator to operator. Hewani will also allow integration of third party payment platforms such as Pesapal.

Virtual City will take a 30 per cent commission on revenues while developers will have a 70 per cent revenue share. Developers will be paid through merchant banks which will include Equity Bank.

Virtual City will vet all applications before they go up on the store. Political campaign apps will be disallowed and so will unsolicited SMS broadcasting.

Hewani has been built over the last one year through purchase of components from Hsend and also custom components done by Hsend for Virtual City.

Virtual City has won a US $ 1 Million (about Ksh. 80 million then) dollar grant from the Nokia Growth Economy Venture Challenge in 2010.