The TRA, short for Telecommunications Regulation Authority of the UAE recently released its report for this year’s second quarter. The report contained statistics of the most used handset devices, most frequented social media sites and platforms and other web applications.
The registration of smartphone networks in the UAE had increased by as much as 5 percent and now stood at 57 percent of total users. The most preferred mobile handset in the UAE was reported to be Apple’s iPhone 5s. The iPhone 5s was reported to hold a 3.5 percent share of the total market of smartphone users, higher than that of any other handset registered on the networks of UAE. This represented a rise from the previous quarter by 22 percent.
The report also named Nokia to have manufactured around 46 percent of all types of mobile handsets registered on networks and used in the country. This figure dropped by almost 4 percent from the prior quarter. Samsung was reported to hold 22.5 percent of the mobile handset and came out second. The third and fourth spots were held by Apple and Blackberry, with figures of 10 percent and 6.8 percent respectively.
Officials from UAE’s telecom sector have commented that the report released provides valuable insight into the emerging trends in the handset market of UAE as also illustrates the dynamic consumer behavior with regards to preferred smartphone handsets.
Officials have also thanked the TRA for researching and providing precise and accurate data regarding UAE’s current market scenario. This has greatly enabled the country to check on its progress as also remain a notch ahead of the global market in the mobile industry.
Coming in second this quarter in the handset category was the 101/1010 manufactured by Nokia, which accounted for 3.1 percent of the market. This was followed by another Apple device, the iPhone 5, with the handset holding a 2.7 percent share of the market. The fourth spot was jointly shared by Samsung’s S3 and 1280/1282 by Nokia which held 2.6 percent of the market each. These were followed by two other devices from Nokia, the E5 and the X1 holding 2.3 percent and 2 percent respectively. Apple’s earlier model, the iPhone 4s reported a 1.9 percent share. The iPhone 4 was named next in the list with a share of 1.8 percent. Other notable mentions include various other Samsung models, the S4 LTE, Galaxy S Duos, Grand, Note and S3 Mini, which held shares of 1.8 percent down to 0.8 percent. Blackberry’s model, the Bold was also mentioned in the list, although it only accounted for a modest 1.2 percent.
The report also contained statistics on the social media market of UAE. It stated that 35 billion visits were made to networking sites during the course of the quarter from both fixed Internet lines and from smartphones. The most visited website store for applications was Apple’s iTunes and it was followed by Samsung App store. Google’s Play Store came in third and was followed by Nokia’s OVI store. Facebook was reported as the most popular social media site accounting for 86 percent of the total visits made. Twitter followed in next with 11 percent. Other popular sites included the likes of LinkedIn and MySpace.