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Over the last 12 months, data from the ten most populous countries in Africa has shown a significant growth in smartphone usage, from less than 25 per cent to almost 40 per cent of all web browsing. Despite the often cited benefits of web browsing on feature phone on the African continent, the data demonstrates that feature phone browsing is negligible (less than five per cent).
James Rosewell, CEO and founder of 51Degrees believes that the vast improvement in browser user experience that moving from a feature phone to a smart phone provides, explains this figure. “The smartphone market in Africa is maturing at a faster pace than many commentators expected. The availability of smartphones is transforming the browsing experience from the big screen to the small. The user experience on a smartphone is so much easier and more familiar than on feature phones.”
Device diversity across smartphones is significantly prevalent in the African continent. Less than one third of all browsing comes from the most popular five handsets in the region, whereas in the UK this figure is 75 per cent and in the US it is 78 per cent. Whilst the most popular devices in the top 10 most populous countries in Africa are broadly similar to those in the rest of the world (dominated by Apple and Samsung) there is a far longer tail of smartphones used in the African continent than in many parts of the world.
One area where web browsing has held steady across the last two years is tablet browsing. This remains at less than 10 per cent of all browsing recorded in Africa, suggesting that the relatively high cost of early tablets has limited adoption in the region. It will be interesting to see if the growth in low cost tablet availability will change this in the future.
Making connections with increasingly clever machines
