Most popular smartphone brands in South Africa

Samsung continues to be South Africa’s favourite smartphone brand, and its dominance grew more between January 2023 and January 2024, according to Statcounter Global Stats data.

The South Korean tech giant’s South African mobile vendor market share increased by nearly 2% from 49.07% in January last year to 50.87% in January 2024.

Statcounter Global Stats analyses over five billion monthly page views of roughly 1.5 million websites to track the leading brands and vendors in various industries and markets.

Samsung’s dominance in South Africa isn’t surprising. The brand sells devices suitable for most budgets in South Africa — high-end, mid-range, and budget smartphones — and offers an extensive after-sales support network.

The brand’s devices also offer long software support periods compared to other Android smartphone manufacturers, and its trade-in offerings for high-end devices make it more affordable for South Africans to get flagship devices.

Over the past twelve months, Samsung’s smartphone market share in South Africa grew by 1.80% — the most of any specific brand Statcounter tracks in South Africa.

It should be noted that the market share of the “Unknown/Other” category grew by 2.28%. However, there is no way to tell what specific brands make up the category.

While Apple’s market share in South Africa fell by 1.23% between January 2023 and January 2024, it moved up to the second-most popular smartphone brand in the country.

This is because Huawei — the second-most popular brand in January 2023 — saw its market share plummet by nearly 5%.

Apple’s move up is impressive, considering it only really caters to South Africa’s higher-end market — a smaller segment than in countries like the US and UK.

Apple’s only mid-ranger in South Africa is the iPhone SE, which starts at R12,499.

Apple’s hold on the market fell from 17.77% in January 2023 to 16.54% in January 2024, while Huawei’s dropped from 19.12% to 14.31% over the same period.

Huawei, like Samsung, sells smartphones that meet a range of budgets in South Africa, and one might expect that this would help it stay ahead of Apple in terms of market share.

However, the brand’s market share continues to drop since it lost access to Google Mobile Services amid the US-China trade war.

Workarounds are available to install most apps commonly available on other devices, but users can’t access the Google Play Store to download and install apps.

Because of this, many South African Huawei users may have considered switching to other Android or even iOS smartphones.

Xiaomi and Oppo saw their market shares increase slightly between January 2023 and January 2024 at 0.81% and 0.91%, respectively.

These manufacturers tend to focus on the mid-range and budget segments in South Africa.

Vivo, which also focuses on the mid-range and budget segments, grew its market share by 0.31% over the same period.

Nokia saw a slight decline in its South African market share over the past twelve months, from 1.93% in January 2023 to 1.48% in January 2024.

The table and chart below compare the market share of the biggest smartphone brands in the country. Data was obtained from Statcounter Global Stats.