{"id":27050,"date":"2012-11-21T15:31:48","date_gmt":"2012-11-21T13:31:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=27050"},"modified":"2012-11-22T09:18:39","modified_gmt":"2012-11-22T07:18:39","slug":"south-africans-in-debt-for-smartphones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/27050\/south-africans-in-debt-for-smartphones\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africans in debt for smartphones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Taylor<\/a>, CEO of Nashua Mobile<\/a>, says a portion of the group’s customers actively seek financing to purchase the smartphones they aspire to own.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe factor that I would single out as perhaps the most important trend of 2012, is the rapid move of smartphones into the mainstream.\u00a0 In the process, they have brought easy, personal access to services such as the web, social networking, email and instant messaging to many South Africans for the first time,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

According to Strategy Analytics<\/a>, one billion people around the world \u2013 or one in seven people \u2013 today carry smartphones compared to 708 million in the third quarter of 2011.<\/p>\n

Adoption in South Africa has been just as impressive, with a World Wide Worx<\/a> study earlier this year showing that around 10 million smartphones have been sold in South Africa to date.<\/p>\n

World Wide Worx also notes that the average user\u2019s cellphone spend on data has increased by half in the past 18 months \u2013 from 8% of budget at the end of 2010 to 12% in mid-2012.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shows that smartphones are slowly starting to deliver on their promise of closing the digital gap between those who can afford PCs and ADSL lines, and those of more modest means,\u201d the chief executive said.<\/p>\n

According to Nashua Mobile, one reason why smartphones are becoming such an attractive option is the fall in local data tariffs over the past three years.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom our side, we are seeing massive uptake of smartphones among our subscribers. It is interesting to see that many users are looking for financing to purchase the smartphones they aspire to own.”<\/p>\n

“In some cases, these are users wanting to buy latest devices from Samsung or Apple.\u00a0 In other instances, the requests for financing come from people who really want to take up the technology for the first time so that they can be connected to the Internet and all the services and benefits it offers.”<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s encouraging to see this adoption, but smartphone penetration is still very low \u2013 one in five, if that much. So the challenge that we face as the telecoms industry for the next year is we will get even more of these devices in the hands of the consumer at an affordable price,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

The company lead said that falling device prices may help \u2013 we\u2019re seeing talk of sub-$40 Android<\/a> handsets \u2013 but innovative financing models will be important.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will also be critical for the industry to package more flat-rate data services that make prices affordable and transparent to the end-user. If we get these factors right, smartphones could within a few years become as pervasive as cellphones are today,\u201d the CEO said.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

SA mobile trends revealed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA\u2019s real mobile penetration revealed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BlackBerry and Nokia dominate SA smartphone market<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Nashua Mobile partners with Look & Listen<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Taylor back in Nashua Mobile driving seat<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Taylor to join Nashua Mobile as MD<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Taylor, CEO of Nashua Mobile, says a portion of the group\u2019s customers actively seek financing to purchase the smartphones they aspire to own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[79,51,26,2827,551,52,607],"class_list":["post-27050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-adsl","tag-apple","tag-headline","tag-mark-taylor","tag-nashua-mobile","tag-samsung","tag-world-wide-worx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27050","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=27050"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27089,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27050\/revisions\/27089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}