Orange Business Intelligence Technology (ORBIT) team, the research and tech unit of Orange Group Nigeria, has carried out a Smartphone & Application Penetration Study across 12 cities in Nigeria. The study which was carried out in Q4 2022 was a follow-up from a prior survey carried out in 2019 by the team in Lagos alone.
The main objective of the study was to evaluate current trends and determine the specific smartphone applications that are commonly used in Nigeria.
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The cities surveyed in this study include Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Ilorin, Kaduna, Kano, Aba, Onitsha, Owerri, Port Harcourt, Jos, and Benin City. To gather data, interviewers were dispatched to each of the 12 cities, where they conducted surveys of 1,000 respondents per city. However, due to the large population of Lagos, the survey target was increased to 2,000 respondents in that particular city.
The ORBIT team instructed their researchers to use natural fallout, which involved surveying individuals they organically encountered on the street. Despite having a respondent limit, the researchers were encouraged to strive for a balanced assessment by attempting to achieve a 50/50 gender split among respondents as much as possible.
64% of the respondents were smartphone users while 36% of the respondents were non-smartphone users. 86% of the smartphone users were Android, 13% were iOS users and 1% were Windows users. Tecno was the most used among the respondents (29%), followed by Infinix (26%), iPhone (14%), Samsung (10%), iTel (7%), and Redmi/Xiaomi (3%). Vivo, Gionee, Oppo, Huawei, Nokia, and realme users were also featured in the survey.
An analysis was conducted on 51 apps that were frequently downloaded. And these apps were divided into two categories: 19 “Global” apps and 32 “Regional” apps. The “Regional” apps were those primarily targeted at the African market.
Key Indices from the Study
The top ten most commonly used Global apps, ranked by penetration rate, were: WhatsApp at 99%, Facebook at 93%, Xender at 84%, YouTube at 70%, Instagram at 69%, TikTok at 62%, Snapchat at 61%, Opera Mini with 61%, Facebook Messenger with 58%, and Twitter with 43%.
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The regional apps with the highest penetration rates were Boomplay at 46%, followed by Jumia at 26%, OPay at 24%, PalmPay at 18%, Access Bank at 14%, UBA at 13%, Naija News at 12%, GTBank at 11%, Jiji Nigeria at 10%, and First Bank at 8%.
The most used banking apps ranked by penetration rate were Access at 11%, UBA at 10%, GTBank at 9%, First Bank at 6%, Zenith at 6%, Stanbic at 1%, and eNaira at 0.2%. Additionally, the study found that Access Bank is currently the largest bank in Nigeria, boasting assets worth $17.7 billion and serving just under 50 million customers.
The Fintech apps with the highest penetration rates were Opay at 14%, Palmpay at 7%, Kuda at 4%, PayPal at 2%, Fairmoney at 1%, and Piggyvest at 1%. Other Fintech apps with marginal penetration rates were Paga, Carbon, Nomba, ALAT, Pocket, and Aella.
Jumia was the most used e-Commerce app with a penetration rate of 12%, followed by Jiji (4%) and Konga (2%). While Binance was the most used Cryptocurrency app with a 3% penetration rate, followed by Chipper Cash and Luno with a penetration rate of 1%.
Facebook still holds the top spot among social media apps due to its low data consumption. According to the study, there was a significant rise in TikTok downloads compared to the 2019 Lagos study. Researchers attribute this surge in popularity to the COVID-19 lockdowns, as TikTok gained more traction than other social media platforms in 2020 and 2021.
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Boomplay was the most used entertainment app with a penetration rate of 33% among respondents. It was followed by YouTube (29%), Audiomack (5%), Shazam (4%), Ayoba (3%), IROKOtv (2%), and Netflix (2%). The study recognized Ayoba, the super app launched by MTN in Nigeria in 2020, and noted its remarkable growth to over 5 million users. Given the study’s results, Ayoba is a platform that should be closely monitored in the future.
