By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Sluggishness in Africa’s two largest economies, Nigeria and South Africa, also reduced mobile phone shipment to the continent in the first quarter of 2019 (Q1 2019), according to the latest market report by International Data Corporation (IDC).
Smartphone shipment to Nigeria dropped 11.9 per cent to 2.3 million units from a year earlier. Shipment to South Africa dipped 4 per cent to 4.7 million units.
However, total active subscriptions across all mobile networks in Nigeria rose by 156,335 to 173.4 million in March, against 173.2 million in February.
The reduction in phone imports largely mirrors both countries’ economic struggles with slow growth and high unemployment, says Quartz Africa Weekly.
Nigeria embargoed Chinese mobile phone imports for three weeks in Q1 2019, made worse by widespread insecurity as well as the postponement of the presidential election by one week in February.
Nigeria’s economy grew just 2 per cent in Q1 2019, far off a target around twice that pace.
South Africa’s economy shrank at annualised rate of about 3.2 per cent in Q1 2019, with industry challenges attributed to overstocking after a buoyant fourth quarter in 2018.
Dominance of cheaper Chinese phones
The African market is expected to see continued dominance of “low-end to mid-range devices” as “cheaper phones offering better value will increasingly dominate the market,” says Arnold Ponela, Research Analyst at IDC.
That represents a silver lining for Transsion Holdings, the Chinese phone maker that leads the African market.
Transsion has built its business model for over a decade by focusing mainly on African markets and producing cheaper smartphones with locally-tailored features such as multiple SIM slots and camera technology calibrated to darker skin tones.
The company’s headquarters is in Shenzhen, China.
It has a manufacturing factory in Ethiopia from where it offers a range of low price phone brands and dominates the African mobile phone market.
Those brands have evolved from being less-fancied to becoming ubiquitous, surpassing Samsung as the top smartphone seller across the continent in 2017.
Transsion consolidated its lead in Africa, even as the continent’s biggest markets slow down.
It recorded the largest smartphone shipments to Africa in Q1 2019 with Tecno and Itel, two of its leading brands that accounted for about a third of total market share, IDC’s report shows.
Its dominance also extends to feature phones as Tecno and Itel jointly hold a 59.7 per cent share of Africa’s feature phone shipments. A predicted consumer preference for low price smartphones suggests Transsion will continue to dominate.
Feature phones hold sway in Africa with 59.9 per cent market share.
However, feature phone shipments to the continent were flat year-on-year at 0.3 per cent in Q1 2019, with shipments totalling 31.6 million units.
IDC forecasts overall mobile phone market sales to decline by 5.3 per cent to 50.9 million units in the second quarter (Q2 2019) due to sharp downturns in macroeconomic and global trade fortunes across the continent.
“Another factor is the rise of protectionist measures aimed at controlling smartphone shipments in multiple countries, which causes sudden short-term swings in the market’s performance,” says Ramazan Yavuz, IDC Research Manager.
Nigeria’s mobile phone use
MTN, the telecommunication market leader in Nigeria, lost 2.09 million subscribers between January and March this year.
It had 67.1 million active subscribers at the end of 2018, which reduced to 65 million in Q1 2019, according to latest data released by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
But the company still generated N282 billion from voice and data services in the first three months of the year, as disclosed in its recently released Q1 result.
And it remained the largest telecom operator by subscriber in Nigeria with 37 per cent share of the market.
NCC data showed that total active subscriptions across all mobile networks rose by 156,335 to 173.4 million in March, against 173.2 million in February.
While MTN lost 531,283 million in March, other operators – Globacom, Airtel, and 9mobile – gained.
Globacom retained its second position with 46.2 million subscribers after gaining 199,186.
Airtel gained the most with 262,803 new users with a new total of 45.2 million.
9mobile also maintained its steady return to growth with 107,822 new subscriptions, which brought its total to 16.8 million.
But despite the marginal rise in active subscribers, Nigeria’s teledensity declined from 124.05 per cent in February to 91 per cent in March.
Teledensity is the number of telephone connections for every 100 individuals living in an area and it varies widely across the country.
NCC said it began calculating teledensity from March based on Nigeria’s population now estimated at 190 million instead of 140 million used over the years.
Active internet subscribers across all networks rose by 1.2 million to 115.9 million in March.
MTN maintained its lead in data customers with 46.5 million, Airtel 31.2 million (second), Globacom 28.4 million (third), 9mobile 9.6 million (fourth).