Africa has world’s fastest-growing mobile market

The importance of mobile gadgets in today’s society has become more and more pronounced. A lot of users are becoming increasingly dependent on such devices, including laptops, tablets, and smartphones that allow them to perform a wide range of actions and activities, such as surf the Internet, read and send email, send instant messages or chat, stream music and videos, play online games, and so on and so forth.

The state of the UK’s mobile network was recently assessed by Ofcom via the publishing of interactive maps that showed which areas had poor or little access to the 3G networks. As a result, the MPs have called on the networks to “stop fighting” among themselves and to begin taking action in implementing measures to fill in these rural “notspots.”

It’s not just the UK that’s currently going through huge growths in the mobile market. In fact, it was found that Africa currently has the world’s fastest-growing mobile market. The GSM Association report revealed that the number of subscribers in the continent was increasing by around 20% each year. GSMA predicts that Africa will have over 735 million subscribers by the end of the year 2012.

GSMA’s director of spectrum policy for Africa and Middle East, Peter Lyons, said that mobile penetration in Africa had managed to surpass 649 million users in the last quarter of this year. “That is equivalent to a 65% penetration rate. Out of every 100 people, 65 have some form of mobile connectivity.”

Of these subscriptions, around 96% were pre-paid accounts with voice services, although more users are beginning to utilize data services as well. The report also added that Kenyan government’s decision to stop imposing a 16% sales tax on mobile handsets last 2009 has also caused an increase in the number of handset purchases by more than 200%.

GSMA’s report revealed that Kenya is at the top of the list when it came to mobile money transfers with over 8.5 million users taking advantage of the service. The report also pointed out that Nigeria had the most number of mobile phone subscriptions in the content, which equaled to over 93 million users. This figure represents approximately 16% of Africa’s total mobile subscriptions.

Lyons added: “The mobile industry in Africa is booming and a catalyst for immense growth, but there is scope for far greater development. To take full advantage of its potential, African countries need to allocate more spectrum for the provision of mobile broadband services, as well as introduce tax cuts for the industry.”

Source – BBC