Airtel has overtaken Glo in market share for the GSM operators to underscore the stiff competition for dominance in Nigeria’s mobile market of 126 million subscribers.
New data for February 2014 shows that Airtel now has over 26 million subscribers representing 21% market share while Globacom has over 24 million representing 20% market share. MTN retains their lead position with over 57 million subscribers representing 45% market share while Etisalat remained the least with over 18 million subscribers representing 14%.
Also, the GSM handset market continues to grow exponentially. Statistics released by Gartner, a leading technology research and consulting company show that handset users bought 490.3 million mobile phones in Q4 of 2013, an increase of 3.9 percent compared with the same period in 2012. The statistics show that global mobile phone sales to end users totalled around 1.8 billion units in 2013, an increase of 3.5 percent from 2012. Samsung comes out the big winner in 2013, with sales of 444.44 million units and a market share of 24.6 percent.