In a report by Informa UK, smartphones sales are in the increase and headed to take over the top spot in device sales effectively outdoing feature phones. This follows closely the global stats where out of 423 million mobile phones sold in Q2 of 2013, 225 million were smartphones while 210 million were feature phones.
Kenya will have 4.3 million smartphones by end of year 2013 according to Informa which will have surpassed feature phones sales with 51% for smartphones and 49% for feature phones. Africa will have 60.95 million smartphones in the same period with South Africa taking the lead at 15.07 million smartphones. Egypt comes second at 11.03 and Nigeria third at 10.12 million smartphones.
Informa attributes this growth by partnerships with Mobile Network Operators taking down the price while at the same time cheap Android devices going below USD 70 are selling in the region. In South Africa there are contracts with installments enabling consumers to avoid the steep price of smartphone acquisition. In Nigeria and Zimbabwe there are bank led device financing initiatives making the high end devices affordable.
Source: Moses Kemibaro
