Transsion Group contributed to 44% of the smartphone sales during 2019

Smartphone sales grew by 10% YoY in 2019 with the highest ever in 2019 Q4 with 59% of handset market share

New Delhi, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Seoul, San Diego, London, Buenos Aires – Mar 18^th, 2020

Kenya's smartphone sale grew by 10% in 2019, according to Counterpoint Research’s Market Pulse. This growth was driven by upgrades from feature phones to smartphones. The smartphone market now captures 56% of total handset sales, most from the sub-$100 segment. The second half of 2019 underwent strong growth due to attractive offers like Black Friday sales, Open Day Sales by Safaricom, Christmas and new year offers on Jumia and MobileHub.

Commenting on the OEM landscape, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, said, “In Kenya’s handset market, Transsion Group’s brands accounted for 44% of smartphone sales with Tecno the leading among its three brands. 72% of smartphone sales come from the sub-$100 price segment. Transsion Group brands accounted for over half of this segment in 2019. This stronghold over the smartphone market by Transsion Group is mainly driven by speedy upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, the affordable localized offerings along with the brand loyalty developed over several years.”

Further adding to which, Mr. Pathak said, “The top 10 smartphone brands held 87% of the market in 2019. Despite Samsung experiencing a downward trend, it had the second-highest smartphone share in 2019. Huawei, a comparatively new brand in the region, experienced strong growth.”

Commenting on the device features, Arushi Chawla, Research Associate at Counterpoint Research said: “As the smartphone market has matured, sales smartphones with a screen size above 6” have increased. This has led to a situation where Kenyan smartphone users have developed an inclination towards smartphones with larger batteries in 2019 – this is both enabled by larger screens and needed as usage intensity has increased.”

Adding further Arushi said, “From the component perspective, MediaTek SoCs led in 2019 with 60% market share, driven primarily from smartphones in the price band $50-$100. Whereas, Qualcomm was the leading SoC for premium smartphones.”

Market Summary:

• The top 10 smartphone brands held 87% of the market share in 2019.
• Six out of the top 10 best-selling smartphone models during 2019 came from brands owned by the Transsion Group.
• Brands like Tecno (Transsion) and Samsung have a stronghold over the Kenyan market, thanks to accumulated trust developed by them over several years.
• The top five brands, Tecno, iTel, Samsung, Infinix, and Nokia HMD, accounted for 77% of the Kenyan smartphone market in 2019.
• In 2019, Transsion Group (Tecno, iTel and Infinix) contributed 44% of all smartphones with a display size greater than 6”.
• Samsung continues to dominate the premium smartphone market with 56% sales in 2019. However, Xiaomi enjoyed a growing share of the premium smartphone sales.
• Smartphones with 32GB internal memory were the most popular. Smartphones with an internal memory of 64GB and 128GB are also growing at a high rate.
• LTE adoption remained above 70% throughout the year. Samsung is driving the LTE contribution with 20% of the total LTE smartphones followed by Infinix and Tecno with 16% and 15% respectively in 2019.

Analyst Contacts:

Arushi Chawla

Tarun Pathak

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