Nigeria leads with highest mobile share of Web traffic

Growth rates continue to soar as Nigeria currently leads with the highest mobile data traffic ahead of India and South Africa. Webpage views from mobile phones have now surpassed those from PCs (desktop computers) as mobile devices remain the primary means of accessing the internet in Nigeria.

In Nigeria, Africa’s largest internet market, 77 percent of the traffic from its 83 million large internet user base is mobile according to BusinesDay analysis of Q1 2015 statistics from independent web analytics firm StatCounter.

Nigeria has one of the world’s largest mobile subscriber markets and the availability of more low-cost smartphones is also fuelling growth in data traffic. Latest statistics from the national regulator, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed that the number of active Internet subscribers that access to the Web through GSM networks rose from 63 million in February 2014 to just over 83 million as at February 2015 – Nigeria has indeed leapfrogged PC-based internet browsing and is the true leader of mobile-first and mobile-only.

“With mobile data traffic estimated to grow 17 times by 2019 and Nigeria currently holding the highest number of mobile subscriptions in sub-Saharan Africa, superior network performance is imperative”, said Magnus Mchunguzi, Vice President, Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa, while speaking at the recent launch of 4G/LTE network in Lagos by Smile Communications.

All of the emerging market regions experienced a strong growth of mobile data traffic in 2014 – with the Middle East and Africa growing by 107 percent according to a mobile data usage study conducted by Cisco.

According to the study, one exabyte of traffic traversed the global Internet in 2000, and in 2014 mobile networks carried nearly 30 exabytes of traffic. Last year’s mobile data traffic was nearly 30 times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. Global mobile data traffic grew 69 percent in 2014 – reaching 2.5 exabytes per month at the end of 2014, a growth rate comparable to that in 2012, but lower than that in 2013, which was a “rebound” year after the 2012 slowdown.

Strong demand for mobile data services in Nigeria saw South African-based group, MTN record a 20 percent jump in net profit in 2014 from the previous year. Data-usage revenue jumped by 33 percent to account for nearly a fifth of MTN’s overall revenue as more subscribers than ever before consume data on smartphones, MTN said.

Speaking at the recently concluded 2015 World Economic Forum (WEF) held in Davos, Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google, USA said, “Around 400 million people in the last year got a smartphone. If you think that’s a big deal, imagine the impact on that person in the developing world.” Smartphones have long been heralded as the great leveler that will bring Internet access to billions of new users for the first time, particularly in the developing world.

The growth of smartphones in Africa, the second largest and fastest phone market today, is no longer news. Smartphone penetration in Nigeria today is arguably the highest in the world.  In 2013, over 10 million smart devices worth $1 billion (N167 billion) were sold in Nigeria according to reports.

“In the last four years it has become a lot easier and cheaper to get the Internet on your phone. It isn’t exclusive anymore,” said Adebola Williams of StateCraft, a leading political and governance communication firm in a recent interview with Reuters.

Smartphone penetration in the Nigeria will continue to rise as consumers demand Internet access everywhere. According to the study conducted by Cisco, average smartphone usage grew 45 percent in 2014. The average amount of traffic per smartphone in 2014 was 819 MB per month, up from 563 MB per month in 2013.

By 2019, aggregate smartphone traffic will be 10.5 times greater than it is today, with a CAGR of 60 percent. The average smartphone will generate 4.0 GB of traffic per month by 2019, a fivefold increase over the 2014 average of 819 MB per month.

According to the mobile data usage study conducted by Cisco, “Overall mobile data traffic is expected to grow to 24.3 exabytes per month by 2019, nearly a tenfold increase over 2014”, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 57 percent. The Middle East and Africa will have the strongest mobile data traffic growth of any region with a 72 percent CAGR.

The Nigerian market, a price-sensitive market, is now seeing growth in mobile phone ownership together with the availability of low cost smartphones. With many users owning more than one phone, subscriber numbers are expected to grow to more than 200 million in 2017, according to London-based research company Informa Telecoms & Media.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) earlier forecasted Smartphone shipments to emerging economies to reach 1.5 billion by 2017. “What makes Smartphone growth so amazing is where the growth will be taking place”, said Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team.

DAN OJABO