Smartphone adoption in African countries like Kenya has been rising over time. Feature phones are still king on the continent but cheap smartphones are eroding their dominance over the years.
According to the latest Counterpoint Research report, Kenya’s smartphone sales grew by 10% in 2019. This was mainly driven by upgrades from feature phones. Sales on the second half of 2019 were strong thanks to offers from Black Friday sales, Safaricom open day sales and Christmas and New Year sales on Jumia and MobileHub.
They found out that the smartphone market in Kenya now captures 56% of the total handset sales, where most of them are from the sub $100 (sub-Kshs 10,000) segment. 72% of smartphone sales are from the sub $100 price segment, which shows that this segment is still king in the Kenyan smartphone market.
Transsion Holdings still holds the biggest market share in Kenya where they accounted for 44% of the sales where TECNO led among its three brands. In the sub $100 segment, Transsion brands accounted for over half of the sales.
Samsung still dominates the premium smartphone market in Kenya with 56% of the sales. However, Xiaomi is becoming a threat where they are enjoying a growing share of the premium smartphone space.
Interestingly enough, smartphones with 32GB of internal storage were the most popular. This storage option has permeated down to the budget smartphone level and that is why it is becoming popular. However, smartphones with an internal memory of 64GB or 128GB are growing at a high rate.
This is how Kenya’s smartphone market is segmented among various manufacturers:
- Transsion Group – 44%
- Samsung – 14%
- Huawei – 9%
- Xiaomi – 6%
- OPPO – 6%
- Neon – 4%
- Wiko – 4%
- Oukitel – 3%
