Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet Usage in Uganda
Internet is one place we all go to whether its on a daily basis, weekly, month, to some people once or twice a day, whereas there’s that group of people that let it consume their lives. It being a necessity to human life today, it has been used for various purposes; business, communication, social interactions, study and research, entertainment, shopping and so forth because it provides us with a plethora of content and interactions – ‘Paid or Free’.
Notably Uganda; ‘The Pearl of Africa’, and just like any other county in the world that is reliant on the Internet, we all have one of the aspect which differentiates us in terms of how this Internet usage is accessed. As you might want know or you already know, according to research complied by the Internet World Stats, Uganda was ranked 7th top internet using country in Africa with an internet penetration rate of 28.6% with 11,924,927 people having access to the internet out of the 41,652,938 total country’s estimated population.
So the three main devices which people use to access the internet here in Uganda are desktops, tablets or mobiles, and there’s surely no doubt about this.
However, the question is which one of these three devices dominates the market share here in Uganda.
According to the latest research done and compiled by an Independent Dublin-based Web Analytics firm; StatCounter between March 2016 to March 2017, they identified the market percentage of each device used to access the internet – showing that mobiles had the biggest percentage of 70.79%, followed by desktops with 27.87%, and finally 1.34% for the tablets, meaning a few Ugandan are using tablets, and in my opinion I might say it’s because of its price, size, or simply its just uncomfortable walking around with this huge gadget with me.
Mobiles
Mobile is undoubtedly the device which dominates in Uganda with a 70.79% of the total market shares. This is unsurprising with regards to affordability mobile phones whether smart or feature as long as it has access to the internet.
Ugandans have found it much easy and affordable access to the internet via their mobile phones dominating Uganda’s market share.
Desktops
Unlike mobile phones and tablets, desktops specially designed for regular use at a fixed location/place. Desktops saw a 27.87% of the Ugandan market share to be precise, and have been used in schools, universities, or computer centers such as internet cafes or IT training centers, where there are large amounts of desktops in a single area for the use of the community.
They are also used as a popular option in offices, getting work done easier and much faster. And this is provided by the company since the employee doesn’t have to incur the costs of buying one for the company. In addition, they are also used in homes.
For sure, we know that desktops can handle complex work much better compared to the smartphones and tablets even though they aren’t that portable. Because of its complexity and other various reasons desktops became the second most used device in Uganda.[related-posts]
Tablets
And finally the Tablets, the extreme version of the smartphones. In Uganda, people haven’t really thought of adopting to use of Tablets like mobile phones or desktops because of various reasons. However, they still have a market for them, and people using them but when you look at the market share, it gets an astonishing 1.34%, it just does not compete with the rest.
One of the reason I might have looked at was the cost.
Tablets are generally expensive devices because of its size or specs, and although they can do so many incredible things, they don’t do more than any regular smartphone, simply because but not limited have the same specs, or one wins the other by a few revamped/added specs.
And for this reason, tablets come third as the most used device to access the internet in Uganda.
Editor’s Note: The stats used here were got from StatCounter.
