Smartphone data usage in SA
According to statistics presented by Google last year (2011) from the Our Mobile Planet survey results, South Africa’s smartphone penetration is around 15%.
Other surveys and statistics from operators indicated that BlackBerry has the greatest smartphone market share in SA, followed by Nokia’s Symbian smartphone operating system (OS).
Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS mobile platforms are also making inroads, but BlackBerry, Symbian, and even Windows Mobile still had greater market share in 2011.
It’s widely reported that smartphones drive data usage on mobile networks, but just how much data does each platform eat through on average?
Of all the networks we asked, only Vodacom were willing to give actual statistics. They didn’t want to reveal any competitor-sensitive information either, so they provided a per-platform breakdown for November 2011:
- iOS: 219MB/month
- BlackBerry: 169MB/month
- Android: 153MB/month
Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys previously revealed that the average data consumption over the 4.1 million smartphones on their network had increased from 40MB to 80MB in the last six months of 2011.
MTN said that they’ve seen a significant increase in data usage from both the consumer and business sectors.
“Whilst modem uptake remains moderate, smartphones are taking the lead, with the BlackBerry operating systems remaining the dominant player,” MTN said.
MTN added that when they looked into the other operating systems, they noticed that the Android OS growth has been slower than anticipated, but the “indicators and trends looking forward are positive.”
8ta said that they couldn’t provide a per-platform breakdown of data usage. “However, we are working on the reporting requirements to provide this intelligence going forward,” 8ta said.
Cell C and Virgin Mobile did not provide feedback by the time of publication.
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Smartphone data usage in South Africa – March 2011
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