South Africa’s top smartphone brands

Samsung has continued to dominate as the most popular smartphone brand in South Africa in early 2025 and appears to be topping sales charts as well.

According to GlobalStats StatCounter, Samsung was the most popular smartphone brand in the country in April 2025.

The South Korean tech giant amassed an estimated 51.86% share of online traffic on major manufacturers’ websites and platforms in the country in April 2025.

It was followed by Apple, with a 16.66% share, and Huawei, with 10.45%.

Former Huawei subbrand Honor climbed from sixth to fourth place in the past year, with its share jumping from 2.23% to 4.66%.

That move kicked Oppo out of the top five smartphone brands and dropped Xiaomi down to fifth place.

StatCounter’s data generally correlates with findings from market research firm Analytico in January 2025.

It surveyed 2,000 tech-savvy South Africans and found the most-liked smartphone brands among them were the following:

1. Samsung — 52.0%
2. Apple — 26.6%
3. Huawei — 7.7%
4. Xiaomi — 6.4%
5. Honor — 2.4%

However, it should be emphasised that the data up to this point only reflects the online popularity of the manufacturers and not actual market share by sales.

While many people might admire Apple’s devices, that does not mean that over a quarter of them buy its smartphones.

Affordability is a factor and although many consumers may desire the latest iPhone, South Africa’s economic reality means many must be satisfied with cheaper Android devices.

South Africa’s biggest mobile network Vodacom told MyBroadband that its prepaid customers preferred Samsung, Hisense, Nokia, Honor and Mobicel devices.

Hisense, Nokia, and Mobicel primarily compete in the lower-end market, while Samsung and Honor offer a wider range of models with prices ranging from around R3,000 to R30,000.

On the postpaid side, Samsung, Apple, Honor, Huawei, and Apple were the top-selling brands.

All these manufacturers offer a wide range of devices in the budget, mid-range, and premium sements.

In terms of buying trends in early 2025, Vodacom explained that bigger screen sizes, camera quality, and battery life were major considerations for all customers.

“The AI functionality on a device is also a purchasing consideration,” they added.

MTN’s top five similar to Vodacom postpaid

South Africa’s second-largest network MTN said that its five top-selling brands were Samsung, Apple, Mobicel, Honor, and Hisense.

The operator said although Samsung remained the leading brand, Honor, Xiaomi, and Itel were making significant gains, particularly in the low-end and mid-range segments.

For its overall smartphone sales trends in early 2025, one particularly noteworthy trend has been growth in prepaid device sales, which MTN ascribed to more affordable offerings.

While Cell C and Telkom did not provide feedback by the time of publication, they have far fewer customers than the two big networks.

It seems likely that Samsung is leading overall smartphone sales in the country in early 2025, considering Vodacom and MTN collectively had 73% mobile subscriber market share at the start of the year.

MyBroadband also asked South Africa’s top online retailer Takealot for its top-selling models.

It also said that Samsung, Xiaomi, Apple, Huawei, and Hisense were its best performers.

The tables below provide a summary of the top-selling smartphone brands in South Africa by sales volumes according to Vodacom, MTN, and Takealot, and the most popular according to StatCounter.

Brands that featured in both networks’ top five best-sellers are bolded in the first table.

Top smartphone brands by sales in South Africa

Most popular smartphone brands by online traffic