1.
REPORT MOBILE
DEVICES
January 2014

2.
1
Mobile Devices
The African business community is adopting the use of mobile devices very rapidly. This is the main
conclusion drawn from the survey conducted by the Africa Business Panel. 1776 African business
professionals did participate in the survey.
The survey demonstrates that only 67 percent of Africa business professionals are using a desktop,
versus 94 percent using laptops. The tablet, a relatively new mobile innovation, is already adopted by
47 percent of the African business world. 76 percent use a smartphone, which is more than the use
of the classic mobile phone (64%). 9 percent possess both a private and a company smartphone.
Security
Laptops are best protected. 87 percent of the laptop owners in the survey had software security
installed. Of users of desktops, 76 percent made use of security. For tablets, 46 percent, and the least
protected are smartphones (44%).
The main reasons for not installing security software are high costs (39%), the lack of urgency (32%)
and complexity (17%). The most used software security is McAfee (31%), followed by Microsoft
(30%), Kapersky (28%), AVG/Grisoft (28%) and Symantec (16%).

3.
2
Usage
Smartphones are used most frequently. 65 percent of the participants in the survey use their
smartphones several times a day, 54 percent use their laptops just as frequently, with users of
tablets following at 44 percent. 22 percent never use their personally owned mobile phone for work
related communication as opposed to the smartphone, of which 6 percent of the owners say they
never use it.

4.
3
Future use
Asked about expected future use, the rise of mobile devices is confirmed by the survey participants.
60 percent expect a strong increase in the use of smartphones. For the tablet and the laptop,
response in perceived increase was 58 and 44 percent respectively.
On the other hand, asked about which devices the participants expected a strong decrease in use, 32
percent indicated the desktop, versus only 4 percent for both smartphone and tablet.
Blackberry still a big brand in Africa, iPhone comes third after Samsung
Samsung is the leading smartphone brand in Africa. 30 percent of respondents that have a personal
smartphone, have a Samsung. Blackberry is runner-up (22%), iPhone comes in third place (19%), prior
to Nokia (11%), HTC (6%), Sony Ericsson (2%), LG (1%) and Motorola (1%).
The - smaller - market for company owned smartphones is led by Blackberry (31%), followed by
Samsung (25%) and iPhone (23%).

5.
4
Survey
This survey was conducted in the period of August and September, 2013. In total, we had 1766
Business Professionals from the continent of Africa participating in this research. 73 percent of these
participants were either senior managers, executives, directors or business owners. The participants
represent a wide range of African countries, with the main contributors coming from Nigeria (19%),
South Africa (18%), Kenya (14%), followed by Ghana (5%), Tanzania (3%), Zambia (3%) and Angola
(3%).