The top 10 mobile phone & tablet brands on the Zimbabwean market

We recently talked about how Android is now the leading mobile operating system in Zimbabwe, something that is attributable to a lot of factors around the availability of cheap Android devices.

But what are the top 10 mobile phone and tablet brands in Zimbabwe right now? It turns out that in all of this Android dominance, Nokia is still the most popular device on the market.

At the end of  January 2015, the shrinking Nokia fan base made up 35.26% of the mobile device and tablet market in Zimbabwe. That’s hardly surprising when you consider how that brand has earned a strong reputation in Zimbabwe.

Samsung, which comes in at number 2, has a 23.64% market share and the rest of the top 5 has a set listed as unknown brands on number 3 (guys like Gtel and Astro are represented here) with 17.15% , Huawei in 4th place with 6.6% and Apple with 4.3%.

The rest of the top 10 list for mobile devices and tablets combined has ZTE on number 6 (3.9%), Blackberry (2.97%), Sony Ericsson (2.11%), HTC (1.39%) and LG with 0.66% market share.

Figures for the most popular mobile phone brands only (sans the tablets) knock Apple out of the top 5 and place ZTE on number 5 instead.

The tablets race in Zimbabwe is led by Samsung, with Apple coming in at a close second. For Africa and the rest of the world, it is a different case as Apple is firmly in the lead. While it has a 46% share of the Africa, globally Apple commands 66% of the tablet market.

Samsung is taking over Africa

The fastest growing brand locally is undeniably Samsung. This has been the same throughout Africa and currently it is the most popular mobile phone and tablet line on the continent. With an extensive range of low to high-end smart devices, the Korean giant has managed to help in raising smartphone penetration for local and regional markets.

Other brands gaining momentum are the Chinese devices that are commonly registered as “Unknowns”. What is remarkable though is how these brands are pushing through the Zimbabwean and African market without the privilege of mammoth marketing budgets, as is the case with continental leader, Samsung.

It just goes to show that at this stage of the devices race for Africa, beyond great function it’s great pricing that wins the day.

The figures used in this article have been provided by StatCounter. More details on their methodology are available on the StatCounter website.