SMARTPHONE shipments in Africa slowed down last year as the mobile device market took a hit from economic turmoil in the region.
In its latest statistical release, the
International Data Corporation (IDC) says that the smartphone market in
Africa stood at 95.37 million units in 2016. And while this is an
improvement from the previous year’s figures, the 3.4 per cent
year-on-year growth is a significant drop from the double-digit growth
rates seen in 2014 and 2015.
IDC speculates that this cooling of
smartphone growth might be attributable to general economic trends in
the region. “Many African economies struggled throughout 2016, and this
had an inevitable knock-on effect on the smartphone market, which had
previously experienced a very strong 2015,” said Mr Simon Baker,
programme director for IDC’s operations in the Middle East and Africa.
IDC singles out Nigeria where the devaluation of the Naira caused a “drop in confidence in the distribution channel”.
But while the smartphone segment of the market suffered, feature phones shipments were on a positive trajectory in 2016.
The number of feature phones shipped to
Africa grew 16.1 per cent to 119.97 million. Bolstered by positive
performance in the feature phone segment, the total number of mobile
phones shipped in the continent grew 10.1 per cent to 215.33 million.
Samsung continued to be the market
leader on the continent with strong competition arising from Transsion,
the Chinese vendor of the Infinix and Tecno brands.
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