Page 1 of 2There is a personal communications revolution underway in Africa, driving new market growth for sophisticated devices
Despite the perception that Africa is a feature phone continent, the adoption of smartphone technology over the past two years has been extremely strong, according to recently published data from 51Degrees, a global device detection specialist that has been tracking the devices that access websites across the continent over the past two years for global brands such as eBay, Unilever and Heineken.
The African continent has seen a dramatic decrease in desktop browsing and a significant spike in mobile browsing in the last two years, according to the latest research by device detection specialists, 51Degrees. This suggests that the traditional perception that Africa is a continent still using recycled feature phones is inaccurate and will have significant implications for mobile network operators’ efforts to manage the growth of data consumption over the mobile networks.
Since the middle of 2013, the volume of web browsing coming from desktops and laptops has dropped from 85 per cent to less than 60 per cent whilst a quadrupling in browsing coming from smartphones has taken place over the same time period. If this trend continues, smartphone browsing will be larger than non-mobile browsing by the end of 2015.
Estimates as to the specific date when this will happen around the world vary but most analysts believe it will take place in 2015, meaning that the African market is not significantly out of step with the rest of the world. With every new generation of smartphone consuming 40 per cent more data, year on year, network operators in Africa face the same “data crunch” issues that operators across the globe are experiencing as data demand grows rapidly.
Devices and data delivery 51Degrees provides device detection services to websites. This enables the sites to quickly and accurately identify which devices are browsing their website and deliver a better user experience optimised for individual devices. Since 51Degrees captures almost four billion web browsing sessions per month, across more than 1.5mn web servers globally, the aggregated data provides an accurate indication of web browsing activity in different countries and continents around the world.
