Mobile devices play a big part in internet usage, but they are more of necessity in places outside of the United States. African countries have been developing services with mobile phones in mind, since many have higher penetration rates among their populations.
I wrote about the leader in African Mobile in an earlier blog for UBM Tech - check out the post Mobilizing South Africa. But that was back in 2012, where SMS was a key communication delivery platform and smartphones had not fully penetrated the market.
3 years later smartphones are making headway, encouraging local app development and economic expansion. So says the latest report from GSMA, an organization representing uniting nearly 800 operators with more than 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem.
The team summarizes the report on their main page.
The mobile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa continues to scale rapidly, reaching 367 million subscribers in mid-2015. Migration to higher speed networks and smartphones continues apace, with mobile broadband connections set to increase from just over 20% of the connection base today to almost 60% by 2020. Falling device prices are encouraging the rapid adoption of smartphones, with the region set to add more than 400 million new smartphone connections by 2020, by which time the smartphone installed base will total over half a billion. - See more at: http://www.gsmamobileeconomy.com/ssafrica/#sthash.AQCHUEKK.dpuf
You can download a copy of the report as well as learn more about GSMA. An infographic is also available; You can view it below.
