BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY)’s phones in African countries are on the rise, as users across the continent continue to see it as a status symbol. As aspiring, on-the-move executives and business community use the once popular phone extensively, the market share of the Blackberry phone is at an unassuming 6%.
However, with trends indicating that soon 16 in 100 mobile phone users is likely to be using the coveted smartphone, there is much to rejoice. The data of the market share was collated by CNBC Africa recently as reported by n4bb.com.
Blackberry User Data
According to the agency, the smartphone use in countries such as South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana, besides Uganda is split between Apple Inc’s iPhones, Nokia’s, Huawei, Sony as well as LG. However, on the question of which would be their next mobile purchase, the surprising answer was Blackberry.
Apparently natives of the continent had acquired a taste for BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) after the pre-owned blackberry phones were given to them by corporates who were using them earlier. As an entire generation of users found themselves using Blackberry 10 ecosystem, their comfort levels with the OS is high and therefore, their interest in purchasing a new Blackberry is also high.
The company which actually conducted the poll on the use of the BlackBerry Ltd smartphone was GeoPoll a mobile surveying company long with World Wide Worx.
According to the study, the largest market was for Samsung with 17% of the market share. The repeat customers for Samsung are currently at 26%.
Separately another study by 2015 Student Tech Survey also conducted by World Wide Work showed that BlackBerry Ltd (NASDAQ:BBRY) continues to be the brand of the next generation of African users as well. Student community’s use of the Blackberry was at 32% and was much higher than that of Samsung at 27% and ahead of Nokia’s 21%.
