16 graphs that shed new light on the South African smartphone space

As we’ve pointed out time and time again, South Africa is a mobile country.

If you’re a regular reader then stats like the fact that the country has more SIM cards than people, with a mobile penetration of around 128%, are probably pretty familiar to you.

Dig a little deeper into the data though and some interesting stats, facts and figures start to emerge. A recent attempt to do exactly that saw online audience measurement tool Effective Measure, survey 5 000 plus desktop internet users focusing on a number of areas including smartphone usage, ownership and advertising.

The results of the survey, conducted in conjunction with the South African chapter of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, throw up some pretty interesting results. That said, some of the results are pretty much what you’d expect:

Take smartphone internet usage for instance. As you’d expect, the vast majority of South African desktop internet users have smartphones with over 80% using their smartphones to access the internet.

Given the level of income required to have a regular, stable desktop-based internet connection, it should hardly be surprising that the vast majority of South Africans who have one also have cellphone contracts.

That said, there’s a surprisingly high proportion of people with prepaid devices. The vast majority of smartphone owners also have a data plan, rather than relying on Wi-Fi alone.

The chief beneficiary of those contracts is Vodacom, which lays claim to around 51% of the smartphone market. The next closest, MTN, only holds around a third of the market. Given that the company has around 25-million overall subscribers in the country, it’s pretty obvious where the bulk of the companies’ respective customer bases lie.

The mobile operators are also clearly benefiting the increased amount of money people are spending on data. According to the survey, half of South African mobile subscribers are buying more than a gig of data a month. Interestingly, around a quarter say they have access to unlimited data. It’s unclear however whether that includes people who have unlimited internet packages at home that they tap into.

What phones are they consuming that data on? Well, for the first time it seems like more people are using Samsungs than BlackBerrys. It is worth bearing in mind however that BlackBerry use may still be higher among non-desktop internet users.

It is interesting however to see that Nokia still seems to outrank Apple among South African internet users.

All of that could change very quickly though. According to the survey, the average South African internet user spends less than three years with a single phone, while an increasingly large number say they intend replacing their devices in under a year.

The kind of phone the people surveyed intend buying when it does come time to replace their devices suggest that things are only going to get better for Samsung.

When it comes to the activities South Africans perform on their smartphones, email and instant messaging still win out. Given the relatively high cost of data in the country that should hardly be surprising. It also shoudln’t be all that surprising that social networking is next on the list, with most other activities coming in at well under five percent.

In the Instant Messaging space, Facebook’s US$16-billion purchase of WhatsApp means that it now holds the vast majority of the South African instant messaging market.

BBM is still holding fairly solid, although it seems likely that it will hold similar positions to Mxit and 2Go in the not-too-distant future.

While the portion of the population making purchases on their smartphones remains relatively small, it is growing. Given the large number of mobile banking apps available in South Africa, it should hardly be surprising that the vast majority of purchases have to do with finance and banking. It is interesting to note however that more people purchase electronics on their mobile devices than book travel, especially given the dominant role the airlines play in the country’s ecommerce space.

Despite a growing smartphone user base, it seems that South African marketing agencies haven’t really pushed the available technology to its limits with SMS still winning out. A part of that may however be down the relatively fragmented nature of the smartphone (and more especially Android) space. SMS doesn’t discriminate by device, meaning that there’s a lot less that can go wrong. It also still commands a lot of attention, more so than a banner ad within an app or on a mobile site.