…Samsung maintains leadership in African smarphone market
Latest figures compiled by International Data Corporation (IDC) have shown that smartphone sales may be on a downward trend. The smartphone market share in Africa totalled 95.37 million units in 2016, representing a 3.4% growth year on year, but a drop from the double-digit rates from 2015 and 2014.
Most of the major African smartphone markets, especially Nigeria, faced severe currency fluctuations that impacted on overall sales in the year under review.
In all, 215.33 million mobile handsets were imported into Africa in 2016, an increase of 10.1% from the previous year. Feature phones however accounted for majority of this growth with 16.1% shipments year on year in 2016 to reach 119.97 million units. This growth, IDC said in a press release, saw feature phones take its unit share of the overall handset market in Africa from 53% in 2015 to 56% in 2016.
“Africa has always been a tough market for mobile phone companies to crack, and in 2016 that challenge even got harder. 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.
It was particularly a tough year in Nigeria, with the devaluation of the naira causing a drop in confidence in the distribution channel. And while North African markets saw an increase in overall handset shipments in 2016, the pace of growth slowed year on year due to exchange-rate fluctuations in Egypt and security issues in Algeria,” said Simon Baker, program director for mobile devices at IDC CEMA.
Meanwhile, Samsung maintained its lead in the African smartphone market in 2016. Samsung’s strategy of reworking product portfolio to include more mid- to low-range models was majorly responsible for keeping it in the lead.
Like the general market, with 28 million units, Samsung’s smartphone shipment in 2016 showed marginal growth from the figures recorded in 2015. Transsion, the makers of popular brands like itel, Infinix, and Tecno smartphones, came in second. The company however outperformed its main competitors in 2016 with regards to feature phone shipments.
“Price competitiveness has become a key issue in many African markets. To grow significantly in these markets, vendors have to be able to address the continent’s large low-income population by providing phones that are priced very competitively. As such global vendors are cautious of the lower-priced Chinese brands now entering the market and are keeping a close eye on them,” said Ramazan Yavuz, research manager for mobile devices in Africa at IDC CEMA.
