Only 10% of Nigerian BlackBerry owners use it for business – Report

By Prince Osuagwu

As at January this year, Blackberry users in Nigeria were said to be around 2.4 million but a research by FactBound Research, last week, reported that only 10 percent of that lot use it for office work.

The report added that majority of the users prefer the device for socializing and communication usage rather than business. This seems to agree with another report which said that 97% of BlackBerry users in Nigeria use BlackBerry Messenger, BBM

Presenting the result, Manager, Consumer Insights of the research company,  Mr Femi Ayelehin, revealed that “19.6 percent of users are engaged mainly in socialising and communication, while 15.3 percent use their BB for research and education. Only 10 percent use their blackberry phones for office work.”

According to Ayelehin, the study also showed that among the 71 percent of those who use Blackberry phones, 24.3 percent agreed that Blackberry has influenced their lives in the area of information sharing, 21.8 percent admitted it influenced their networking life, while 19.3 percent said it has influenced their social status.

Findings also discovered that BBM/BIS is the most popular application used by 28.1 percent of respondent, followed by Facebook with about 23.1 percent, and then the Email application, used by 18.18 percent, while about 12 percent spend more time on Twitter.

Ayelehin further revealed that an average of one to three hours daily is spent on BB by 30.8 percent of respondents, four to seven hours daily by 25.6 percent, while 24.4 percent spent an average of eight to 11 hours daily on their Blackberry phones.

Nigeria currently has a very small smartphone market at this time with only 5% of phone users owning one. However, BlackBerry seems to have become  the number one smartphone brand with half of that market already using the RIM made devices.

This may be unconnected to the inexpensive unlimited internet plans and the high popularity of BlackBerry Messenger in this region.

Again, some of the  blackberry phones like the curve series are relatively cheaper when compared to other smartphones.