{"id":184693,"date":"2017-07-11T16:23:17","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T14:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=184693"},"modified":"2017-07-11T16:23:17","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T14:23:17","slug":"the-state-of-south-africas-mobile-market-vs-the-rest-of-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/184693\/the-state-of-south-africas-mobile-market-vs-the-rest-of-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"The state of South Africa’s mobile market vs the rest of Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile research group GSMA Intelligence has released its Mobile Economy report for 2017, showing the state of mobile in Africa.<\/p>\n

According to GSMA-I, South Africa is the second biggest mobile market in Africa after Nigeria – but has a far higher mobile penetration rate than the west-African nation.<\/p>\n

As of 2016, South Africa has 37.5 million unique mobile subscribers, a 68% penetration rate, compared to Nigeria’s 86 million mobile subscribers, representing 45% of the population.<\/p>\n

Among South Africa’s mobile operators, total subscribers add up to well over 80 million connections – however, this is explained by the fact that many people have more than one SIM card across a couple or more networks.<\/p>\n

Only four other countries have managed to get over 20 million subscribers (Ethiopia, Kenya, the DRC and Tanzania), GSMA’s data showed.<\/p>\n

More than half a billion people across Sub-Saharan Africa will be subscribed to a mobile service by the end of a decade, according the GSMA’s study.<\/p>\n

It projects that the number of unique mobile subscribers in Sub-Saharan Africa will grow from 420 million (43% of the population) at the end of 2016 to 535 million (50% of the population) in 2020, making it the fastest growing region in the world over this period.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mobile technologies and services generated $110 billion of economic value in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2016, equivalent to 7.7% of regional GDP \u2013 a figure expected to grow to $142 billion (8.6% of GDP) by 2020.<\/p>\n

The mobile ecosystem also directly and indirectly supported approximately 3.5 million jobs in the region last year, and made a $13 billion contribution to the public sector in the form of taxation.<\/p>\n

Local mobile operators have invested $37 billion in their networks over the past five years, mainly to deploy new 3G\/4G mobile broadband networks. About a third of mobile connections in region were running on mobile broadband networks at the end of last year, forecast to rise to 60% by 2020.<\/p>\n

These new networks \u2013 alongside rising smartphone adoption \u2013 are driving demand for digital content and services.<\/p>\n

In South Africa, for example, 3G is almost universal, while 4G networks now reach three quarters of the population.<\/p>\n

“Consequently, the country has a mobile broadband penetration rate of more than 70%,” the group said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Further, up to 90% of smartphone users South Africa use at least one IP messaging service – such as WhatsApp, BBM or Facebook Messenger – regularly, the group said.<\/p>\n

Regionally, the SADC region current has about 4% 4G penetration, and this is expected to increase to 15% by 2020.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0SA mobile subscribers in 2017: Vodacom vs MTN vs Cell C vs Telkom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobile research group GSMA Intelligence has released its Mobile Economy report for 2017, showing the state of mobile in Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1750,26],"class_list":["post-184693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-gsma","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184693"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":184705,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184693\/revisions\/184705"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}