In recent times, mobile phone manufacturers have bombarded markets world round with an array of smartphones.As a result of this saturation, it now looks as if this new breed of mobile handsets have wiped out the traditional text plus talk mobile phones, relegating said devices to the sidelines thanks to growing demand for smarter devices.
According to ABI Research, Africa is fast becoming a powerhouse in the mobile phone market thanks to incredible rates of adoption. The research firm notes that 2G GSM mobile subscription in African countries now tallies 62.7 percent of the total subscription in the continent. 3G subscription in both WCDMA and CDMA2000 now counts for 11 percent of the entire market with 2.5G subscriptions representing little over 27 percent.
Bearing these subscription numbers in mind and the latest quarterly report of this continent, analyst expects that the number of mobile phone subscribers will surpass 80 percent mark by the end of the first quarter in 2013. 54 African countries and their combined 1.08 billion population had 821 million mobile phone subscriptions by the third quarter of this year, according to the ABI report. This depicts an increase of 16.9 percent year over year basis that means overall subscription is in the direction of 76.4 percent.
Another reason for anticipating that mobile phone subscription will cross 80 percent mark is that many cell phone users in Africa keep more than one active prepaid subscription in order “to minimize interconnection charges,” so this trend indicates towards further growth.
Therefore, ABI expects that mobile phone market in Africa will flourish further and can attain 1.12 billion subscribers by 2017, adding 13.9 percent to take the worldwide mobile phone market level to 8.11 billion. Research Associate at ABI Research, Marina Lu noted in a statement that, “While Western Europe languishes with barely positive overall growth quarter-on-quarter, Africa managed to generate 4.2 percent growth in the same period.”
This gives a picture that the increasing growth rate of mobile subscription in African continent is easily going to outshine the mature markets in the rest of the world. A recently release Deloitte report for worldwide mobile carrier association also points in the same direction, as it has nominated the sub-Saharan African mobile market as the fastest growing market in the entire world because this market has shown an abnormal growth rate of 44 percent from year 2000.
This report also noted that in contrast to 12.3 million fixed line phone connections, mobile connections have shown a growth of 475 million. The majority of these mobile connections are prepaid rather than monthly carrier billing because there is dearth of credit cards and banking facilities in the region. Moreover, numerous mobile money services through SMS are also contributing towards this cause. To have an idea about the number of subscribers on top seven African carriers, see the list from ABI report below:
MTN in Nigeria has 43.2M subscriptions
Vodacom in Nigeria has 37.7M subscriptions
Vodafone in Egypt has 37.5M subscriptions
MobiNil in Egypt has 32.4M subscriptions
MTN in South Africa has 23.5M subscriptions
Etisalat in Misr has 22.9M subscriptions
Glo Mobile has 22.0M subscriptions in the same region.
Source: TechCrunch
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