Some holistic perspective on the state of mobile in Africa, mobile’s development into 2012 and just how massive mobile internet access in Africa is, here are some facts from the video:
- Africa is just over 30.2 million km² – home to more than 1 billion people
- Speaking more than 1000 languages, we’re the most multilingual content.
- Average Sub-Saharan woman touches her hair 37 times a day, she touches her phone 82 times a day.
- In 1994, Nigeria had 100 000 land lines, internet access was zero.
- 1994 – The first mobile network launched in Africa.
- First phone weighed in at 0.5kg’s and cost $2000.
- 2012, mobile penetration in Africa has risen to 65%!
- There are more mobile phones in Uganda, than there are light bulbs.
- “Africa is the 2nd largest and fastest growing mobile market in the world”.
- Smartphones out sell computers 4:1.
- Price of a mobile device in 2012 is under $80
- 50% of Africa’s connectivity to the internet is mobile.
- Infrastructure development up from $335 million in 2009, estimated at 1.5 billion in 2015.
- Mobile is driving Africa: 6/10 fastest growing economies, GDP up 5%.
- 50% of Africa’s population is younger than 20 years old << scary.
We are the Mobile Generation and the future looks bright for Africa.
Though not Africa specific Opera recently release some interesting stats on effectiveness of mobile advertising per device, which is very relevant to Africa, when considering RIM (BlackBerry) devices are much more prevalent here than in the States, there is a lot of scope for growth in mobile advertising (might have seen this already) http://www.opera.com/sma/2012/q2/
Another interesting fact is that World Wide Worx says data is now cutting into voice tariffs is also intersting, this is Africa specific, not sure this would apply to international stats.
http://www.worldwideworx.com/mobile-data/
Hi Simon, thanks for visiting and the additional relevant resources, had not seen them before. Certainly an innovative and interesting time for mobile in Africa.
yeah, on that note if you are looking into serving ads on mobile we have been looking at this lately, which I think looks like an interesting solution, http://www.openx.com/mobile