Have you ever wondered why there are commonly used smartphone brands used in Uganda? It sometimes comes down to cost, brand loyalty, advertisement, or any of the familiar marketing jargon that comes your way. With most people longing to hold an iPhone, this is a totally different story according to Q2 2020 data from Eskimi. The data indicates that Tecno leads with 32.3 percent as the top device brand amongst internet users in Uganda use.
The second place of the smartphone usage is held by Samsung at 26.71% share leaving Infinix in third place with 12.9 percent, Apple at 8.8%, and Huawei at 4.4%. The data shows that the market is dominated by the two main brands — Samsung and Tecno– leaving other players at the tough competition amongst them.
China’s Transsion Holdings dominates the market with over 49.1% of its devices being used by Ugandans to access the internet. Tecno is the only company in Uganda that actually does any kind of advertisement to promote its devices. With this trajectory, there will be no surprise that by today or early 2021, half of the smartphones used in Uganda will either be a Tenco, Infinix, or an iTel. Other phone brands mostly from China like Xiaomi, One Plus, etc make up 11.5% of the smartphones.
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| Smartphone brand | % internet usage |
|---|---|
| Tecno | 32.3 |
| Samsung | 26.1 |
| Infinix | 12.9 |
| Apple | 8.8 |
| Huawei | 4.4 |
| iTel | 4.1 |
| Others | 11.5 |
A recent report by market research company Canalys indicated that in the third quarter of 2020, global smartphone shipments reached 348 million units and despite the covid-19 pandemic, total shipments were up 22 percent from the previous quarter. Samsung regained the lead, up 2 percent to 80.2 million units. Huawei took second place with 51.7 million units, which was followed by Xiaomi with 47.1 million units. This is a different trajectory for Uganda compared to what is on the world market, and this because Transsion Holdings does a lot of marketing and partners with local telecom companies to push its devices into the hands of Ugandans.
Given these statistics of Ugandan smartphone internet usage, it will come as no surprise that the Android mobile operating system dominates with 84% of usage and iOS at 4.8%.
