Smartphone user growth in South Africa among fastest worldwide
South Africa will land among the top 25 countries for smartphone user growth worldwide in 2014, eMarketer estimates, and the country will climb ahead of the global average in this category over the next four years. South Africa will tie with France for smartphone audience growth this year, with both expected to see a 27.1 per cent increase in users.
The company expects slightly slower smartphone user growth in South Africa in 2015, coming in at 22.8 per cent. In comparison, growth in the global smartphone audience will slow even more next year—by 8.2 percentage points. This trend will continue through 2018, when the number of smartphone users worldwide will increase by 7.6 per cent.
Looking at mobile phone internet users in South Africa, October 2014 polling by On Device Research found that among the 64 per cent of respondents who used smartphones, 69 per cent used their advanced handsets for instant messaging, compared with 50 per cent of feature phone users.
Read the rest of this story at eMarketer.
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