Mobile phone connections grow to 35 million, says Report

Mobile phone connections, the report indicates, grew from 31.2 million in March 2021 to 35 million in March 2022, representing an addition of 3.8 million subscribers on different networks.

At least 3.8 million mobile phone connections were added on the network in the 12 months to March, according to data from Uganda Communication Commission (UCC).

The details are contained in the UCC quarterly report covering the period between December 2021 and March. 

Mobile phone connections, the report indicates, grew from 31.2 million in March 2021 to 35 million in March 2022, representing an addition of 3.8 million subscribers on different networks.

The growth, the report shows, was across all phone categories with feature phones growing from 8 million to 20.9 million. However, basic phones, which are mainly used to make calls and send text messages, declined from 5.1 million to 3.6 million.

Smartphones continued to grow, rising from 8.1 million to 10.4 million backed by a growing digital economy, and internet usage.

Feature phones make and receive calls, send text messages and provide some advanced features while smartphones are multi-purpose mobile computing devices, characterized by stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems. 

Smartphones are internet enabled and have multimedia functionality in addition to core functions such as voice calls and text messaging.

In terms of quarterly growth, device additions on the network stood at 1.3 million new devices in the three months ending December 2021, the highest net quarterly addition in the last 12 months.

However, during the broadband connections by 2.5 million on account of growth in multi-sim gadgets.

Smart and feature phones account for more than 95 percent of new network connected terminals.

On a global scale, UCC recorded a 40 million growth in the number of global smartphone shipments in the quarter to December 2021, which translated into a 10 percent quarter-on-quarter growth despite the shortages in hardware chips witnessed during the last half of 2021. 

Apple dominated shipments during the period, shipping 85 million phones across the globe, which translates in 23 percent of total phone sales.

Samsung and Xiaomi accounted for 19 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

The UCC baseline for computation of telecom penetration has shifted and therefore the newly computed telephone penetration rate now stands at 69 active lines per 100 Ugandans.

This is based on Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) population projections at 44.2 million Ugandans for the year 2022.

Sales  

Globally,  Apple shipped 85 million phones or  23 percent compared to Samsung and Xiaomi, which accounted for 19 and 12 percent, respectively.