South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria are among the worlds top 25 countries in smartphone user growth a new ranking projection (2013-2018) published by eMarketer has indicated.
The report released Tuesday 30 December 2014, mentions that South Africa will land among the top 25 countries for smartphone user growth worldwide in 2014 and the country will climb ahead of the global average in this category over the next four years.
It indicates that South Africa will tie with France for smartphone audience growth, with both expected to see a 27.1% increase in users. Number of smartphone users in the country rose by 27.1% in 2014.
From the statistics posted on the eMarketer website, South Africa is in the 12th position, Egypt 17th and Nigeria in the 21st position in projected ranking of smartphone usage for the period from 2013 to 2018.
eMarketer expects slightly slower smartphone user growth in South Africa in 2015, coming in at 22.8%. In comparison, growth in the global smartphone audience will slow even more next year—by 8.2 percentage points. This trend will continue through 2018, when the number of smartphone users worldwide will increase by 7.6%.
In the report, looking at mobile phone internet users in South Africa, October 2014 polling by On Device Research found that among the 64% of respondents who used smartphones, 69% used their advanced handsets for instant messaging, compared with 50% of feature phone users.
Gaming beat out instant messaging as the top smartphone activity by just 1 percentage point, conducted by 70% of smartphone users. In comparison, just 36% of respondents who owned feature phones played games on their handsets.
While feature phone users were still more likely to use their phones for other leisure activities like reading celebrity news and gossip (25%, vs. 19% of smartphone users), smartphone users followed up on sports news and scores more than those with basic models. Voice calling functions like Skype and Viber were also more popular on smartphones than feature phones.
eMarketer has estimated that in 2015, these kinds of mobile phone activities will help boost smartphone user growth in South Africa to the seventh-highest rate worldwide—6 percentage points above the global average.
