Nigeria has retained its position as world’s most mobilized country, a new report released by Twinpine has shown.

The Twinpine’s 2017 “Nigeria Mobile Trends Report”, shows Nigeria gained 5% from the previous report in its mobile traffic.

Recall in a similar report in 2016, Nigeria was placed ahead as the most mobile telecommunications induced nation, with 76% of the internet traffic comes through mobile.

The latest report indicates the country maintains its lead as statistics by Worldometer, NCC, Stat Counter put the total (human) population at 192 million (estimated); 142.6 active lines mobile at 74% mobile penetration; 91.5million mobile internet users at 47% mobile  internet mobile penetration; 30% smartphone penetration; Nigeria is now head of India and South Africa with 79% and 78% internet traffic coming through mobile, respectively.

Multi-Sim Phones Usage
Nigeria is also notable as the destination for the usage of multi-sim phones in the world at 66%, followed by Bangladesh (63%) and Tanzania (53%), while India and Phillipines at the least on the table with 48% each.

Share of Desktop versus mobile traffic
In Nigeria, mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic since 2012, and has continued to dominate since then. From the study, it was established that Mobile Traffic grew from 73% in 2014 to 81% in 2017 while the Desktop Traffic decreased from 25% to 13% during the period.

Web Usage by Device Vendors
According to the report, Samsung leads “Web Usage by Device Vendor” accounting for 25% of the market; Apple (20%), Tecno (13%), Infinix (9.5%), Blackberry (9.5%), Gionee (5%), Nokia brands account for 4.5%, Microsoft (4.5%), HTC (4%) while other brands put together account for remaining unknown (7.5%).

Web Usage by OS
Android is clearly still the preferred mobile operating system used in Nigeria. Other operating systems selling in the market are iOS, RIM, Windows Phone, Nokia OS, Symbian, LG proprietary and Samsung proprietary.

Market Share by Mobile Operator as at June 2017
According to the report which reflects NCC’s statistics showing MTN accounts for 37% of the market share followed by Glo 26%, Airtel 24% and 9Mobile 13%.

Meanwhile, on the growth of Active Mobile Subscribers by Operator from 2014 – 2017, Glo and Airtel have remained most gainers, while MTN and 9Mobile have had their subscriber base reduced over time.

According to the report, Glo grew its customer base from 28,486,530 in 2014 to 37,411,407 as at June 2017; Airtel 27,989,580 (2014) to 34,656,605 (2017); while MTN has a decline from 60,493,053 (in 2014) to 53,093,756 in 2017 (June) likewise 9Mobile from 21,559,667 in (2014) to 18,022,674 as at June 2017.

Top 5 States with Active Voice Subscription (VS)
The Twinpine report quotes the National Bureau of Statistics which identified Lagos state as leading with 20 million the highest voice subscription in Nigeria amounting to 12% of the total VS, followed by Ogun State, Kano, Oyo and Kaduna States.

Also, Lagos leads the active internet subscription but Abuja enters the top 5 in terms of states internet subscription in Nigeria.

Market Share Of Mobile Browser
Opera is still the preferred mobile; it leads the table with 53.28% of the market share; Chrome 20.18%; UC Browser 13.8%; Blackberry 3.57%; Android 2.92%; Safari 1.75%; IE Mobile 1.73%; Samsung Internet 1.05%; Puffin 0.98% and others 0.75%.

Nigerian behavioural studies hinted on the future opportunities of other sectors outside apps and entertainment in Nigeria; 48% of the people surveyed indicated that they use mLearning apps.

From the respondents, 35% have used reading app; 42%- banking app; 35%- healthcare related app; 32%- taxi/booking app and 32%- food delivery.

What online activities do Nigerians do on their smartphones & computer at least weekly?

Social Media is the most popular activity performed by Nigerians weekly on their mobile phones as 70% of the respondents use smartphones, while 9% visit social networks using destop computers; 5% use smartphone to listen to music, 1.5% use desktop; 2% look up for maps on smartphone; 9% use smartphone to search for product information while 3% use desktops; only 3% use smartphone to make online purchases; 19% use smartphone to watch online videos, 7% use desktops; 5% play games on smartphones, only 2% use desktops; 28% check their mails on smartphone, 8% use desktop computers; 37% use smartphone to visit search engines, while 7% resort to desktops.

mCommerce 
63% of all M-Commerce orders in Nigeria come from mobile. Nigerian customers who use mobile phones to shop online buy a wide range of products, the top three are: mobile phone, beauty and perfumes and women’s clothings.

Average price of smartphones have dropped significantly between 2014 and 2016, and sale of smartphones have gone up.

Average price of smartphones reduced from $165-$216 (2014) to $99-$117 in 2016; booming smartphone sales (2014-2016) recorded over 394% growth. More men at 61% shop online than women 39% in Nigeria.

Mobile Purchase Interest Of Nigerians
Fashion items (26.3%) and mobile apps (22.8%) top the list of things people buy with their mobile phones. Others are, music (15.8%); games (13.2%); Ebooks (5.3%); videos (7.9%); electronics (14%) and home appliances (14%).

Interestingly, the report shows 66.9% of Nigerians have bought an item with their mobile phone.

As 33.1% haven’t bought things using their mobile phone, 38.7% cited fear of buying fake items as the major reason; 7.5% delivery delays; slow internet 7.5%, delivery changes account for the remaining percentage.

However, 58.5% of Nigerians have paid for a mobile app before, though Nigerians are not too keen on in-app purchases, only 42.6% have made an in-app purchase.

Main Reasons Why Nigerians Uninstall Apps
Large size (28%) and too many notifications (17.5%) top the chart of reasons Nigerian uninstall apps. Other reasons are, too slow (9%); too complex (7.9%); too many ads (15.9%); privacy (11.1%) and not the expected value (10.6%).

Mobile Money
71.5% of Nigerians, the report says, use a mobile banking app. Out of the number, 12.7% use it as option for saving money; 63.6% for money transfer; 42.7% to check balance; 36.4% pay bills with mobile money apps; 47.3% for airtime purchases and 17.3% don’t use mobile apps.

Payments Made Directly To Mobile Phone Bill
Nigeria tops the chart with carrier billing (paying for items directly from the phone bill) at 42%. Twinpine quoting Mobile Money Report, MEF 2017 report said that 9% of Nigerians have made an in-store mobile payment; increasing from its previous value of 6% in 2014.

Also, average monthly transactions in mobile grew from a transaction value of 5millionUSD in 2011 to 142.8millionUSD in 2016, according to KPMG Fintech in Nigeria Report, 2016.

Number of transactions performed using the USSD service has more than doubled the number of transactions on mobile banking platforms for banks offering USSD- Mobile Money Report, MEF 2017.

Mobile Video
Many Nigerians prefer to watch short online videos, especially when via smartphones as 29% prefer to watch short online videos via their smartphone.

The report also shows the frequency at which online videos are watched shows that 27% of Nigerian watch videos online daily; 25% weekly; 12% less than monthly; 12% monthly and 23% never watched videos online.

“Last year, we released our 2016 Mobile Trends Report which highlighted key stats and analysis of the Nigerian mobile space to celebrate our 5th Anniversary.

“This year, the Nigerian economy has taken a different turn and as a result, there has been a significant shift in the market trends and behaviour of end users. This report which is downloadable via http://twinpinenetwork.com/2017-nigeria-mobile-trend-report/, serves as a mobile trend and advertising behaviour guide for marketers to find effective ways to continually deliver maximum ROI,” said Chika Umeh, Insight Lead, Twinpine in an email to Nigeria CommunicationsWeek.