Embedded Solutions development on platforms like Point of Sales (POS) terminals , ATM and mobile phones are yet to be fully appreciated in Nigeria.This in my own view could be because e-commerce or electronic payment business is still very young here. Despite the fact that the needs for these products are glaring, the level of want for them are not encouraging.You find a situation where banks, companies know the benefits of these products but they don't seems to care if they exit.

For example, we have interesting Nigerian Tailor made solution like Loyalty, E-voucher , Ticketing and Time attendance solution on POS and some other value adding solutions on mobile phones but nobody seems to be gunning for them.

With the loyalty solution a merchant can build a good relationship with his customers and seals up deals with him so that his competitors will be on their toes. Since the loyalty solution gives him demographic information of his customers, these information can be manipulated to make him get his customers loyalty.for example, a merchant owning a filling station can say he is giving out 5 litres of fuel for every 1000litres of fuel purchased by his customers or imagine a situation where a big company like MTN sends u a happy birthday text on your birthday,You begin to wonder how that could happen mean while it's an automated loyalty solution that sends u that text on behave of MTN.Already your subconcious mind has been made to prefer MTN to other networks, that's loyalty at work.
many more can be said about other embedded solutions.

As a software analyst , i've done alot of development on Ponit of Sales (POS) terminals, some of which are already in used out there others are still on the shelf.It pains me when i see the slow rate of appreciation of these product.

View some of my past projects in the attached file.

Hi Aydeggy,

Your discussion on embedded software development, please find it interesting and unfortunately you never left contact email address. For further communication here is my email: franksmss@yahoo.co.uk

Hope to here from you.

Thanks
Franks

It all depends on the type of embedded system you intend to write and what you want it to run on. We have tested a trimmed down version of FreeBSD running on a flashed based computer. We use it as router and a bandwidth manager and so far, it works well. If all tests goes well, we will deploy it in a production environment and even sell it to our clients that need routers.

Why reinvent the wheel when there are open source alternatives out there

Candylips, It's not about reinventing the wheel, it's about Developing solutions that will be fit for use here and abroad.i will authoritatively assure you that most of those so called "open source alternatives" don't really fit our local industry. It will also interest you to know that most solutions that run on foreign Platforms were developed by Nigerians based in Nigeria.You may not believe this but it is true. i'll tell you that i have done alot of outsourced jobs which i don't know the exalt location around the globe where they are been used,but i definitely know they run somewhere.

If we must repackage Nigeria then we must first start from believing that we can do it.India believed it once and today they are different from all of us.


aydeggy@yahoo.com