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43% of African phone owners now browse the internet

A new report from Ericsson ConsumerLab in to mobile phone in sub-Saharan Africa, Bridging the Digital Divide, contains a few startling stats about phone usage in sub-Saharan. Most staggering of all is that the report authors found that a massive 43% of all phone owners in the region regularly use their handsets to browse the internet.

To put the figures in perspective, however, a recent report by the GSMA reckoned that there are 253 million phone users in the region, out of a population of around 910 million people (most subscribers have two phones). That would put the number of people using the mobile internet at around 108 million. According to Internet World Stats, the total number of internet users – including fixed line and cyber cafes – for the same region (not just the sub-Saharan region) just 18 months was 107 million.

That’s pretty impressive.

The exact methodology for this report hasn’t been revealed, but it appears to be derived from last month’s Ericsson Mobility Report.

Ericsson is incredibly bullish about the economic potential of expanding mobile and internet access, which it says will be driven by a new generation of affordable smartphones which will hit the $50 mark soon.

“As mobile devices become more sophisticated,” the authors write, “The benefits of the internet will be even greater. The average consumer will have the ability to effectively and efficiently surf the net, access a rich source of information, and change their lives on both a personal and business level.”

According to the firm, it’s social media which is the strongest force for convincing people they need the internet, making it to the third most popular activity on all phones after SMS and the camera.

ericsson report

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