A statistics released in the weekend last from Stockholm, Sweden states that within the second quarter of this year, mobile subscription in Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and other African countries have reached 781 million; with Nigeria taking the lead.
The continent takes the third position after Asia Pacific and China, which presently have 1.28 billion and 1.17 billion mobile subscriptions respectively.
Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, India, Middle East, Latin America and North America added one million, six million, eight million, six million, and four million new subscribers respectively.
With about 105 million net additions of mobile subscription across the globe in the second quarter of this year, the global mobile subscription is anticipated to grow six percent from 2012 to 2018; reaching nine billion, higher than the population of the world, which is stands at seven billion.
The report, which puts global mobile subscriptions at 6.5 billion at the end of June, noted that world wide mobile penetration reached 91 percent.
According to Ericsson’s Head of Strategic Marketing and Intelligence, Patrick Cerwall, China alone presented 30 percent of net additions, adding 30 million subscriptions; Indonesia added nine million, India- eight million, Bangladesh- five million; Nigeria- four million of net additions.
The foursome of GSM operators including MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat currently shares 117 million active lines; while the Code Division Multiple Operators including Visafone, Starcomms and Multilinks fight to retain the loyalty of 2.56 million subscribers. The Fixed Wired and Wireless operators share 382,678 lines.
Nigeria’s teledensity is presently at 85.3 percent. The GSM Association puts South Africa’s mobile penetration at 66 percent per subscriber.
According to the quarterly statistics report for the first quarter of the 2012/13 Financial Year released by Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the countries mobile subscription was put at slightly above 30 million, stressing that about 77.2 percent of its population now have access to mobile communications
Cerwall noted that mobile subscriptions have grown around seven percent annually and two percent quarterly basis.
The Ericsson’s Head of Strategic Marketing and Intelligence, in the mobility report said this was due to the fact that many subscribers have several subscriptions, with reasons including users lowering their traffic cost by using optimized subscriptions for different types of calls; maximizing coverage and having different subscriptions for mobile PCs, tablets and for mobile phones.
“Consequently, subscription penetration can easily reach above 100 per cent, which is the case in many countries today. It should be noted however, that in some developing regions, it’s common for several people to share one subscription, having for example a family or community shared phone”, Cerwall stated.