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Nigeria - Phenomenal Growth, and More to Come
The Nigerian market has been growing at an impressive pace for some time, but the latest figures from the national regulator the NCC show that growth reached unprecedented levels in the second quarter of 2008. Quarterly net additions totalled a phenomenal 7.38m, an African record by a considerable margin. In fact, Nigeria claims the top five figures for quarterly net additions in Africa with a previous best of 4.09m in Q4 06; outside of Nigeria, the best ever result was in Egypt, which added 3.33m in Q3 07.
Moreover, there is no sign of any slowdown. Indeed, an analysis of the monthly figures shows that growth is increasing rapidly, with 1.31m new connections in April, 2.38m in May and 3.68m in June. This means that in the month of June alone, the net gain in customers was more than any quarterly figure ever recorded anywhere else on the continent. The total customer base shot past the 50m mark in June to reach 51.73m at the end of the month, up from 33.80m a year earlier. On an actual basis, annual net additions totalled 17.93m, up from 11.86m in the prior year, while proportionate growth was only 1.0pp lower than the year-earlier figure at 53.1%.
The first fully mobile CDMA networks in Nigeria launched in the first quarter of 2007, and although they remain a small part of the total market, their growth has certainly contributed to the rapid rise in mobile ownership. At the end of Q2 08, there were 2.11m mobile CDMA customers, 4.1% of the total. A year earlier, there were just 0.22m, 0.6% of the total. Growth was particularly strong in Q2, with a net gain of 1.55m or 272.6% in proportionate terms.
How long can such extraordinary growth be maintained? Penetration was just 37.4% at the end of Q2, although in some markets, such as Pakistan, growth has slowed markedly before the 50% penetration mark has even been reached. However, as the NCCĂ's monthly figures show, a similar slowdown does not appear to be imminent in Nigeria. We will continue to monitor the Nigerian market closely to see if its Q2 08 performance can be repeated, or even bettered, in subsequent periods.
Posted to the site on 5th August 2008
This article was extracted from The Mobile World Briefing, the weekly newsletter from The Mobile World.
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