Worldwide sales of smart mobile phones has finally surpassed that of feature phones with a market share of nearly 54%, according to one of Gartner’s latest reports on smartphone sales.
However, in the UAE, this trend seems to spread at a slower rate. The country’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) released a report in which it states that smartphones and feature sales are almost equal.
In its Q4 2013 report, TRA outlines the basic handset, social media and app trends in the UAE. It has discovered that even though the number of registered smartphones in the country has increased by 5% in Q4 2013 alone, feature phones continue to have an impressive share and sale rates on the local market.
Also, the study showed that UAE consumers show preference towards two main handset brands – Apple and Nokia. Apple leads on the high-end market, as well as on the smartphones market. The company’s iPhone 5 was found to be the most popular smart mobile phone in the United Arab Emirates. Still, it is closely followed by its competitor Samsung Galaxy S3. Third and fourth on UAE’s smartphones market, however, are iPhone 4S and iPhone 4.
Nokia, on the other hand, continues to dominate the low-cost market in the country. Its most commonly used feature handset is Nokia 101/1010. According to TRA’s report, about 51.5% of all registered handsets in the UAE were manufactured by the Finnish company. Despite that, the penetration of both Samsung and Apple on the country’s market has witnessed a rise during the last months of 2013. In contrast, Nokia and Blackberry saw a huge drop.
TRA has also estimated that during Q4 2013, app traffic has reached 2.3 billion visits. The most popular application among UAE’s mobile users was Apple iTunes. It accounted for an impressive share of 84%. It was followed by Samsung Apps, Blackberry App World, as well as Nokia OVI.
Another thing which the research examined was UAE’s social media use trends. According to the report, Internet users in the country visited social network websites 11.5 billion times between October and December 2013. Facebook saw the biggest traffic share – 84%. The other popular social platforms in the United Arab Emirates were Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and Maktoob.
According to TRA Deputy Director General for Telecommunications Sector, H.E. Majed Almesmar, these findings showed that the United Arab Emirates is a dynamic market on which smartphones and features phones are still able to coexist.
