Nigeria leapfrogs India, South Africa in mobile web

Nigeria is now the most mobile telecommunications induced nation on earth, with 76% of the internet traffic in the country coming through mobile.Nigeria is now ahead of India and South Africa with 65% and 57% internet traffic coming through mobile, respectively.

A “Nigeria 2016 Mobile Trends Report” released by Twinpine at its fifth anniversary shows that with a total population of 184.6 million (estimated); 74.7m unique mobile users (any type of handset); 40% mobile penetration (unique users vs. population) and 30% smartphone penetration rate. From 2011 – 2016, number of smartphone users increased from 4m to 15.5m.

There is also a rise in the lenght of time Nigerians spend daily on smartphones exceeding other media platforms; thus, the report indicated that Nigerians spend an average of about 131 minutes watching television, 80 minutes on laptop; 193 minutes on smartphone and 39 minutes on tablets daily.

Twinpine’s report also shows that share of desktop traffic decreased from 57% in 2011 to 18% in 2015 and mobile share of traffic increased from 42% in 2011 to 79% in 2015.

The report indicates that Samsung leads web usage by device as it accounts for 25% of the market; iPhone (20%), Blackberry (15%), Infinix (9%), Nokia brands account for 7%, Tecno (6%), HTC (3%), Microsoft (2%), Sony (1.0%) while other brands put together account for remaining (17%).

Nigeria mobile market trends as disclosed in the report, shows that subscribers can buy 15 times worth of data with N1000 in 2016 than they did in 2011, alluding to the ‘data bundle war’ which mobile operators have embarked on in the recent past.

Apparently, the active mobile subscribers table by operators from 2012 – 2016 shows MTN dominance, increasing from 19,732,901 (2012) to 57,045,721 (2016), Glo subscribers also increased from 8,602,731 (2012), 34,608,793 (2016), Airtel 5,948,190 (2012) to 33,866,798 (2016) and Etisalat subscriber base also rose from 4,455,290 (2012) to (21,877,542). The 2016 figures are as at first quarter of the year.

Meanwhile, market share of device vendors from 2012 to 2016 reflected the changes in the market which is primarily dominated by Infinix, Tecno, Innjoo, Xiaomi, Gionee, Huawei, while Facebook continues to lead market share of social media sites from 2012 to 2016 with 98% acceptance.

Nigerians mobile lifestyle, Twinpine also disclosed that 50% mobile phone users watch online video in the evening; 69% of the number watch videos on their mobile phone daily which was in line with a recent report by Ericsson indicating that in 2015, video accounted for around 50% of mobile data traffic while almost 70% of all mobile data traffic will be from video by 2021. It will grow by 55% annually during this period.

Speaking on the report Chika Nwachukwu of Twinpine said “we created this report to highlight interesting trends from our five years of connecting brands with their audiences on mobile in Africa.

“From lifestyle habits to mobile market share analysis, this report highlights key mobile activities of Nigerians and shows how mobile has grown over the years,” says Nwachukwu.