Nigeria Leads SmartPhones Penetration in Africa

Nigeria, the most populous African country is leading its counterparts on the continent in smartphones penetration with a penetration 41 percent .

The country is followed by followed by South Africa with 31 percent and Kenya with 7 percent.

This was disclosed by George Ferreira, vice president and chief operating officer, Samsung Electronics Africa at the Africa Regional launch for the new Samsung GALAXY Note II and Samsung GALAXY Camera, held in Cape Town, South Africa.

In line with the company’s strategy to bridge digital divide in the continent, Samsung Electronics has also announced plans to push smart phone penetration in Africa and to further expand its share of the smart phone/devices market across Africa.

Ferreira disclosed that Africa is now the second largest and fastest mobile phone market in the world after China, with Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Ghana leading the pack in smart phone sales.

He explained that usage grew from a base of 90 million in 2005 to a current estimate of 450 million handsets in 2012.

Emmanuel Revmatas, Samsung Electronics West Africa’s Mobile Business Leader for Nigeria, said that the advent of new privately owned submarine cables and their landing on the coast of many East and West African nations including Nigeria as significantly reduced cost of internet access and increased the adoption of smart phones on the continent.

“Mobile broadband penetration has increased tremendously over the last few years and all across Africa we are witnessing continued investment in infrastructure by most of the network operators making it possible for telecom subscribers to take full advantage of world of endless opportunities that smart devices like the Samsung Galaxy Note II offers”, said Revmatas.

He said the Samsung Note II supports 3G and Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies and is already available in all accredited Samsung stores across the country Samsung, which is a global leader in digital media and digital convergence technologies and currently leads on the global scene as the number one Smart Phones vendor.

He announced the company’s readiness to enhance its sales and marketing programmes in Africa to enable local mobile phone subscribers enjoy Internet access on smart devices.
 
Samsung, Ferreira explained will focus on forging synergies with leading mobile phone operators in Africa in the strategy geared at reaching out to consumers across sub Sahara Africa.

"With such growth and market potential in Africa, Samsung will be going the extra mile to deepen the local smart phones market by introducing quality products as part of a very deliberate effort to bridge Africa's digital divide," Ferreira said.

“Africa is an important market to Samsung and the Launch of both the Galaxy Note II and Galaxy Camera attests to Samsung's commitment to bridge the digital divide. This is in addition to many of our initiatives across Africa aimed at technology transfer, capacity building, youth education and empowerment as well as fostering knowledge based African continent among other”, he added.