For many, smartphones are the only connection they have to the world wide web, allowing them to keep up with the news, reach their banks, communicate with their friends and families, checking out Nigeria football betting at Betway, and seeking information about pretty much anything they want. But what brand are those 21 million active smartphones, and what operating system they predominantly use? Let’s take a look at some numbers offered by the internet statistics service StatCounter.
Market share
According to StatCounter, the most widely used smartphone brand in Nigeria is Tecno (as of August 2018) with a market share of more than 25%, followed by Infinix (18.75%), Samsung (9.28%), Itel (5.66%), and Nokia (4.67%). Brands like Gionee, HTC, and Lenovo are also present on the market, along with many others. Minor brands are used by a bit over 8% of Nigeria’s smartphone owners, while StatCounter couldn’t identify almost 19% of the requests, simply putting them into the “unknown” smartphone category. In other markets, Huawei, Xiaomi, and other brands have a strong presence – in Nigeria, in turn, the strongest and most accessible smartphone brands seem to be Tecno and Infinix, both brands owned by the Chinese holding company Transsion Holdings. Transsion also owns brands like itel, Spice, and Oraimo, also popular in Africa. When it comes to tablet computers, the leading brand is also Tecno with a market share of more than 31%, followed by Samsung (25.58%), Apple with almost 10%, itel with 3.35%, and other smaller brands like Airis, ZTE, eStar, Amazon, and Alcatel. Once again, StatCounter was unable to identify a large number of devices – almost 20% of all tablets fall under the “unknown” category.
Mobile OS breakdown
The Nigerian smartphone and tablet market is clearly ruled by Android, with almost 84% of the devices running Google’s operating system. The percentage of iOS is small, around 3.3%, followed by outdated platforms like Nokia’s Series 40 (2%), Blackberry OS (1.16%), Windows Phone (1%) and Linux (0.77%). The majority of connected Android devices in Nigeria run Android 7.x (over 37%), followed by Android 6 Marshmallow (almost 24%), Android 5.x (almost 19%) and Android 4.x (over 12%). Only about 5% of all active Android devices run Oreo, and few enough run Android 9 to only fit into the “other” category. MTN chief executive Rob Shuter recently said that Africa is not yet ready for a high-speed 5G network. But as the numbers above show, it is more than ready for 4G.
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