A top African official of Samsung Electronics
Tuesday disclosed plans by the South Korean manufacturer to supply half of the
estimated 20 million smartphones to be sold on the continent this year with the
intention of doubling sales in 2014.
“Samsung this year will ship 50 percent of all the
smartphones in Africa,” Thabiet Allie, Head of content and services for Samsung
Electronics Africa, said.
“Next year we are looking at doubling this number
and the year after probably doing a substantial increase,” Allie furthered at
the telecom conference.
He made the statement in Cape Town at the annual
AfricaCom conference adding that of the 100 million mobile phones sold in
Africa, a fifth of them are smartphones.
Smartphone sales and usage is on the increase in
Africa, thanks to the growing population of its young tech-savvy individual
which is attracting foreign vendors of consumer products like smartphones.
A recent study published by GSMA Intelligence this
week on the socio-economic impact of the mobile industry in Sub-Saharan Africa
revealed that Sub-Saharan Smartphone penetration was 4 percent, compared with a
global average of 17 percent at the end of 2012.
The report which pointed out that by mid-2013, there
were 253 million unique mobile subscribers and 502 million connections, also
noted that smartphones will constitute 20 percent of the Africa market by 2017.
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