TRA Reveals Data for Second Quarter of 2016 on UAE Market Shares of Mobile Handsets, Smartphones and Social Networking Sites

The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has revealed statistics for the second quarter of 2016 (1 April to 30 June) on the country's most popular smart phone handsets, social networking platforms and applications sites. Examining the present state of the market, the TRA's report exposes the marketplace share of mobile phones in the UAE by producer and model.

Whilst the report does not focus entirely on Smartphones, it is significant that throughout Q2-2016, 77.81% of all handsets registered on the UAE's networks were Smartphones.

The top five handsets in use in the UAE during Q2-2016 were Apple iPhone 6 (penetration of 4.17%), Nokia 108 (penetration of 2.99%), Samsung Galaxy J100H/J1 (penetration of 2.45%), Apple iPhone 6S (penetration of 2.32%) and Apple iPhone 5S (penetration of 2.29%).

The above may recommend that Apple is dominating the UAE market. In truth it is the Samsung brand that is most popular. The TRA's report reveals that one-third of all handsets signed up on UAE networks during Q2-2016 were made by Samsung. The top 4 brand names were Samsung (33.3% of all handsets signed up), Nokia (27%), Apple (13.6%); and Blackberry (1.8%).

Throughout Q2-2016 users of Smartphones and fixed Internet services in the UAE visited various applications sites. Samsung Apps Store was by far the most checked out applications website, followed by Apple iTunes, and lastly Android Applications. In regards to social networks, UAE Smartphone and repaired Internet users made 24 billion visits to social networking websites during the duration 1 April 2016 to 30 June 2016. Check outs to Facebook accounted for 90.39% of overall visits to social networking sites, followed by Twitter with 5.18% of sees, then LinkedIn, MySpace, and Maktoob.