Nearly Half of All Phones in UAE are Smartphones

As reported by The National: Nearly half of the registered phones in the UAE are smartphones, new data from the telecoms regulator showed.

“During the period between July 1, 2013 and September 30, 2013, 46 per cent of handsets registered on the UAE’s networks were smartphones, a figure that has increased during each quarter in 2013,” the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) said in a statement.

That is up two percentage points from June, when the smartphone penetration rate stood at 44 per cent.  At this rate, smartphones would account for half the phone market sometime around the middle of 2014.

The TRA report also showed that the iPhone 5 was the most popular smartphone in the country during the quarter, with a 2.8 per cent share of all registered handsets. Coming second was the Samsung S3 with 2.5 per cent. The iPhone 4S came third with 2.3 per cent, and tied for fourth were the iPhone4 and BlackBerry 9900 at 1.8 per cent.

Following them were: Samsung S4 at 1.6 per cent; Galaxy S Duos at 1.2 per cent; BlackBerry Bold 9790 at 1.1 per cent; and BlackBerry Bold 9780 at 1 per cent.

Overall, Nokia dominated the market with a 56.2 per cent market share. Samsung came second with 16.4 per cent. Third was BlackBerry with 10.2 per cent, and fourth was Apple with 7.8 per cent, then LG at 1 per cent, Sony at 0.9 per cent, Huawei at 0.5 per cent and HTC at 0.6 per cent.

“Unlike Nokia and Blackberry, Samsung and Apple recorded increases in their market shares in third quarter,” said the report.

Apple’s iTunes was the most popular applications website during the quarter, followed by Nokia OVI; Samsung Apps; BlackBerry App World; and Android Applications, the report says.

Users of smartphones and fixed line phones made a total of 13.7 billion visits to social media sties during the quarter. Facebook topped the list with 91 per cent of the visits. It was followed by Twitter with 8 per cent of the total visits, Maktoob at 0.1 per cent, then LinkedIn and MySpace.