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Which phone do you use, and what’s your dream phone? Why do you prefer a certain phone or mobile provider? Which are your must-have phone apps?

To answer these questions and more, we recently surveyed our community members in South Africa via the GeoPoll App and mobile web and the answers are quite interesting! Follow along and check how they compare with the answers you would have given.

Which is the most popular phone brand in South Africa?

 

most popular phone brands in south africa

Most respondents said they use Samsung and Huawei, while most people’s dream phones are the iPhone and Samsung (particularly S10).

What are the most important phone features?

phone space
No one wants to see this message 🙂

When choosing a phone, most people in South Africa look at the storage space, battery capacity, camera, and the Operating System, in that order.

What influences the choice of mobile network provider?

Network reliability and coverage (46%) is the most important factor when choosing a provider.  In the age of mobile data, data cost follow follows closely (36%), and then other factors such as loyalty to a brand and the cost of calls/SMS.

It’s no wonder that data costs and accessibility play have so much importance – over 70% of the respondents access the internet via the mobile phone!

What do people do most on their smartphones?

Internet takes up the most time of smartphone functions, with 45% saying they use the internet on their phone more than 4 hours a day. Other functions that people love spending lots of time on their phones are reading and listening to music.

time spent of smartphones

Within the internet, there are several other uses. You can browse websites, chat, catch up on social networks and stream videos, among others. In South Africa, a large percentage (over 40%), spend over four hours every day chatting on messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. 36% spend more than four hours on social platforms.

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So, what are the most popular smartphone apps in South Africa?

WhatsApp (messaging), Facebook (social media), YouTube (streaming) and Uber (transport) we found to be the most popular applications in the respective categories.

Here is how they rank up against the others:

social media south africa

 

How do these stats match up with your own usage? Tell us in the Facebook comment section below, or on our Facebook page.