Here at oAfrica, we’re all about finding the latest data on African Internet habits. In general, current data is hard to find. Accuracy is a must as well. That said, various charts from web analytics company StatCounter came to our attention after they were recently shared in multiple development presentations. After reading the lengthy (and convincing) 52-question FAQ, we decided to have a look.

Keep in mind that sample sizes of data per African country vary greatly. 121 million data points exist for Egypt, but that number quickly drops to 8.2 million from Kenya. Guinea-Bissau, for comparison, provides a sample of 3,400 points. Data can easily be filtered by Africa as a region, but doing so generalizes much of what is going on at a country level.

Mobile OS

SymbianOS share has tanked from 70% to 40% during 2012. However, Nokia’s new Series 40 phone has picked up 28% of the Symbian share. The rest went to Android.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

 

Mobile vs. Desktop

Mobile ranges from 11-19% in 2012. Desktop hold a 81-89% share. However, the mobile share ranges greatly at the country level.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile vs. Desktop Market Share

 

Social Media

Facebook dominates all other platforms, but YouTube has made ground this year.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Social Media Market Share

 

Mobile OS shares by country are broken out in a separate post.

Note: Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 15 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. Stats are updated and made available every 4 hours, however are subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 14 days from publication.