South Africans spent more on telecoms products in the first half of 2026 but bought fewer of them, according to NielsenIQ’s latest State of the Retail Nation analysis. Average selling prices in the category, the largest in the local tech and durables market, rose 9.8% while unit sales fell 7.9%. It was also the only…
Across Africa, smartphone shipments fell 7%, while prices rose by $41 year-on-year to $202. South Africa’s smartphone market grew 17% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2026, bucking a broader downturn across Africa as rising device prices put pressure on consumers. According to research firm Omdia, smartphone shipments across Africa fell 7% year-on-year in the…
Oppo launched in South Africa in September 2020. Chinese smartphone maker Oppo is retrenching employees in South Africa amid a slowdown in global smartphone sales. The company confirmed the job cuts after a source told ITWeb that a total of 13 employees in different roles had been impacted. Oppo did not disclose the number of…
Omdia research forecasts global shipments of smartphones priced below $400 will decline by more than 22% this year. (Image source: 123RF) The escalating prices of DRAM and NAND flash memory threatens to reshape global smartphone economics, placing pressure on mid- to low-end smartphone devices. This is according to market research firm Omdia, which forecasts global…
Africa’s rural communities face the largest disparities, with mobile internet gender gaps significantly wider outside urban centres. (Image created using ChatGPT) More than 810 million women across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) remain offline, with Sub-Saharan Africa recording one of the world’s widest mobile internet gender gaps. According to the GSM Association’s (GSMA’s) Mobile Gender…
The global smartphone market is heading for its steepest annual contraction on record, with shipments projected to slump by 13.9% this year to 1.08 billion units, Counterpoint Research said on Monday, citing a worsening shortage of memory chips. The forecast is a downgrade from the 12.4% decline projected in February, with the squeeze in global…
Zhou Qunfei’s rise from poverty to woman behind smartphone screens around the world Zhou Qunfei, the founder of Lens Technology in China with Apple Inc.’s chief operating officer Jeff Williams in her touchscreen factory.PHOTO/Weibo / @Derrick_Zhang. By PATRICK MAYOYO [email protected] In the glittering halls of power where billionaires, presidents and technology titans gather, few stories…
The Clicks Communicater smartphone on display. Startup Clicks Technology makes a Blackberry phone. Clicks When Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, physical keyboards quickly lost ground to touchscreens and faded from mainstream smartphones. Now, a new wave of startups, including U.K.-based Clicks Technology and Chinese firm Unihertz, is bringing them back and carving out a…
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Remo Casilli/Reuters In 2014, Amazon introduced its first smartphone, hoping to take on Apple and Samsung. Instead, the Fire Phone, overseen directly by founder Jeff Bezos, was scrapped in barely over a year, one of Amazon’s highest-profile flops. Now, Amazon is dialling up a new phone. The latest effort, known internally…
The GSMA Handset Affordability Coalition — comprising six of the largest mobile operators in Africa — on Tuesday announced that six countries on the continent have been earmarked for the launch of its low-cost device priced at just US$40 (R660). The announcement was made during a press conference at the African Pavilion stand at Mobile…
