Nigeria feature phone market grew 15% in 2017; HMD Nokia No. 3 vendor of feature phones

Nokia 105 (2017)

Counterpoint Research published interesting data about the mobile market in Nigeria, the most populated and the country with the highest GDP in Africa.

Contrary to popular belief, the feature phone market in Nigeria saw a growth of 15% in 2017 compared to 2016. Overall, 48% of all mobile devices shipped in Nigeria are feature phones, while smartphones took the other 52%.

HMD Global managed to bring the Nokia feature phones into the top 5 group of feature phone vendors in Nigeria. Nokia phones grabbed 6% of market share in 2017, while the data for 2016 wasn’t provided, probably because it was pretty low. The biggest factor in sales of Nokia feature phones was the Nokia 105 (2017).

In terms of smartphones, HMD Global didn’t make it into the top 5 smartphone vendors during 2017, and we hope for better results in 2018. Counterpoint concluded that the Nigerian market is highly price-sensitive, so the affordable Nokia 2 for less than €100 and the rumored Nokia 1 that should go even lower should improve HMD’s performance on the smartphone battleground.

You can read Counterpoint’s whole research about Nigerian market here.