With an increasing uptake of smart-phones in sub-Saharan Africa on the back of rapidly growing demand for access to the Internet, the ‘smart’ mobile phone could potentially bridge the digital divide, a report by Ericsson has revealed.

Ericsson’s ConsumerLab report, released in December, says the smartphone enables Internet access to a wider scope of citizens, which will enable a level of connectivity not seen before.

While basic and feature phones remain the dominant mobile technology, the growth in the uptake of the smartphone – an essential device in connecting personal and professional lives, as well as society at large – is expected to significantly increase, says Ericsson sub-Saharan Africa head of marketing, strategy, government and industry relations Shiletsi Makhofane.

Mobile phones continue to be an “extremely influential” technology across sub-Saharan Africa, with their low cost and multifunc-tionality features, compounded by the region’s lack of fixed-line infrastructure, propelling the mobile phone’s status as the “leading device”.

report notes that the mobile phone is the most important piece of technology to 73% of mobile users, with Ericsson’s Mobility Report previously pointing out that the mobile phone is the most used device among sub-Saharan African consumers.

Ericsson head of sub-Saharan Africa Fredrik Jejdling says that, during the third quarter of the year, 25-million of the 113-million new mobile subscriptions worldwide emerged from sub-Saharan Africa, surpassed only by China with the addition of 30-million mobile subscriptions for the period.

Within the next four years, mobile sub-scriptions in sub-Saharan Africa will rise from the current 560-million to 930-million.

Global smartphone subscriptions will soar to 5.6-billion by 2019, while an estimated 476-million smartphones are expected to reach the sub-Saharan African market within the next four years.

“Smartphone users are driving Internet use and are showing strong interest in performing data-intensive mobile activities such as video calling, watching live TV shows and streaming videos from channels such as YouTube,” he adds.

Further, the expected introduction of a smartphone in the “$50 price range” will be key to the trend of growing Internet use across the region.

“Our analysis shows that the entry of low-cost smartphone handsets in the market will allow people from different social classes to benefit from an integrated ecosystem,” Makhofane says.

More than half of consumers not using the Internet on their phones are interested in doing so in future, while 62% of mobile app users believe that apps are more effective than mobile sites.

Apps are likely to evolve beyond enter- tainment and communication, the Consumer-Lab report finds, adding that they have the potential to fill service gaps in many sectors, including education and transport.

“The success of financial applications such as M-Pesa has put sub-Saharan Africa on the map. Today, mobile banking is primarily used for buying airtime, transferring money and receiving bank/credit card notifications. But the trend of conducting financial transactions via mobile phones has a promising future,” the report explains

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