Cell phone gambling news

Growing Popularity of Mobile Gaming in Namibia

As of June 19, 2007, Bettie (not her real name) was working as a domestic worker. She lives in Greenwell Matongo with her boyfriend and her 2 children. Her monthly salary is N$1,200.

Bettie puts N$100 every month from her salary to buy airtime so that she can enter the Winna Mariba SMS competitions every week. For N$4 at a time, SMS gamers can join and have the chance to win a weekly prize of N$20,000, N$100,000 or even N$1 million.

Any player that uses any product by the Trustco International Groups has a chance to win even N$2 million. Another avid player of the game is Monica Kennedy, a single mother of a teenage daughter, sends 5-6 SMS with the use of her cellular phone to the SMS contest. She spends N$60 for the SMS competition.

These are just 2 examples that the mobile gambling market of Namibia is growing fast. First introduced on the European continent and some parts of Asia when businesses started to get mobile numbers to send some content to interested customers, mobile marketing has certainly grown over the last few years.

Now considered one of the major marketing channels, mobile marketing is growing rapidly, with 100 million SMS sent out every month on the European continent alone. The Trustco Organization introduced the SMS competitions in the country of Namibia in 2004, but it did not become popular until August 2006 with the debut of the 777 Winna Mariba competition and the SMS competition as well.

Everybody in the country who has a cellular phone joined in the competition. The Managing Director of Trustco, Quinton Van Rooyen, said that the SMS competitions are a good time to advertise as well.

Subscribers can join the competition by sending a message to the premium number, which is 777. Each SMS costs N$4. The subscribers will have to send their answers and then receive a message containing their reference numbers - a 6 number combination followed by any letters in the words "Trustco Group".

Should any of the random numbers and letters match the winning variation, that number will win from N$10 up to N$2 million.

 

July 01, 2007
Nancy Parker