Hey reader! Need I introduce myself? Nope nope!
What’s most important is that which I have written in this piece. But before we explore the aim of this piece, I have a little story to tell and the I’d conclude with my opinion on the title you see just above.

While I was in school, final year precisely, I had the 3-credit unit seminar to present as well as the 6-credit unit project to present. Unlike my other course mates who had sleepless nights on how to go about these two, having to pay an urge amount of money to the typist and then getting to spiral bind the work with money again. That’s too much worry already. But for me, I had a laptop and I felt all I’d be needing is data and speed, so, I was relaxed.

About two weeks to submission of the seminar, I had my seminar half way finished and I was still relaxed even though the process was really tedious; having to reference your sources and all. Then one faithful morning, I was seeing a movie in my laptop when a friend of mine came visiting. We chatted for a while, and then, I offered to go accompany her to her destination. Of course, I needed to take my bath and while I was in the bathroom, she asked if she could get the movie I was seeing with her flash drive. I agreed and that was the end of my hard disk, my dear.
Unknown, to the both of us, the flash drive was infested with virus and it had infected my laptop and everything in it, including my seminar which I was half way through with. Another funny thing is, trying to find a way to fix my laptop, I got into the hands of a wrong engineer, so he kept on asking me to back stuffs that weren’t working. Now, submission date is close, I had spent all the money I had trying to fix my laptop a, so what option was I left with?
Just around same period, I told another friend, a guy this time, about my predication and he assured me that I could meet up with the deadline. He got my TECNO device from me and helped me download the MS Word application into my device and that was how I was able to type a 20-page document with my smartphone, well referenced and still smashed the course with an A. The end.

So now, I’d be write about the increase in the penetration of smartphones and its impact on Nigeria and its citizens. Note that this article is born out of research as well as a survey research which was adopted with questionnaire as the instrument of gathering data from about 70 respondents. Let’s ride.

Communication is said to be “at the heart of human existence and technology” as it has always determined the nature of and nurture how man communicates. As with a break in communication or wrong communication could lead to an outbreak of conflict between two parties. Thus, the introduction of mobile telephone and most importantly smartphones has altered the way people communicate.
The use of smartphones in our society today owes its importance to the globalization of the world’s order. In contemporary times, since the industrial revolutions and other subsequent technological evolutions, telecommunication has proved to be one of the most important infrastructures that aids the socio-economic well-being of any state/country. Globalization has even amplified the importance of telecommunications to any economy. It is ever to not that the telecommunication Sector is one of the fastest-growing sectors in terms of capitalization.

The use of smartphones has indeed influenced one of the major dividends of Nigeria’s transition to democracy. The use of this technological reform has brought about a high rise on Foreign capital inflow, it has Increased access to telephony services, and of course created Job opportunities. Also, through this technological reform, there has been some sort of Indigenous skills acquisition and technology transfer and so on.

However, one could now see that it is an essential infrastructural component that promotes the development of other sectors including agriculture, education, industry, health, banking, defense, transportation and tourism. It is indispensable in day to day interactions and indispensable in times of national emergency or natural disasters; It also reduces the risks and rigors of travel.
Today, mobile phone has become so popular that virtually everyone possesses at least a brand of mobile phone. This explosion in the rise of mobile and smartphones explained the increase of mobile phone users in Nigeria from 100,000 in 2002 to over 81 million in 2011.
The table below shows the statics of the respondents and their opinion.

Male Female Total
Feedback 76.7% 23.3% 100%
Number 23 7 30


The survey covered about 30 people, 7 females and 23 males. It covered basically teenagers and youth. However, our conclusion, even though might have a general overview of the effect of the use of smartphones on the citizens of Nigeria, it would take precision to Nigerian teenagers and youths.

From the survey, the respondents were made to make a comment about their most used apps and the impacts of their smartphones on their daily activities. Check table below.

Chat Browsers Calls/SMS/MMS Others
Number 27 21 3 19
Percentage 90% 70% 10% 63.3%

From this, we could tell that these people value communication, even though through chats than calls and sms, the values surfing the internet either for education or for fun and other things such as, communication via video calls, music, taking awesome photos, business and making money etc. So, they are more about the social aspect of this technology than any other. The smartphones would have a distinct effect on adults from age 40. These set would indulge more in surfing the internet for news than other.
Smartphones such as TECNO, Infinix, Nokia, which are user friendly and youth friendly tend to provide such applications like the Tecno Spot for chats and joining educative forums, the Boom Player for music, Carl care for customer service, Whatsapp for chats and communication, Adobe reader for reading pdf documents and so on.

However, the respondents still agreed to the fact that the use of smartphones in Nigeria has it’s some positive effect as well as negative effects.

NEGATIVE POSITIVE BOTH
PEOPLE 67.7% 0% 33.3%
TOTAL 100%

From this stat, the respondents were of the opinion that there are more positive effects of the smartphones than there are negatives. Amongst the positives are EASY COMMUNICATION, SPEEDY EXECUTION OF PLANS, BUILDING NETWORKS, JOB CRREATION etc. The negatives; EQUIPS FRAUDSTERS, ENGAGES THEFT, BRINGS ABOUT IMMORALITIES etc.
These and some others were the impacts the respondents identified as effects of the increase in the penetration of smartphones. Nonetheless, they prefer to have more smartphones then laptops in the country and their descriptions of Nigeria without smartphones were simply epic.
MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR TO THE HIGH PENETRATION OF SMARTPHONES IN NIGERIA:
Basically, as predicted in 2016, Nigeria continues its trajectory down the increasingly widening highway that is the mobile internet. With a current internet penetration rate of 53% (97.2 million users) Nigeria has a much higher penetration rate than across Africa (18%). In other words, Nigeria has one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in Africa, and there are basically 5 top contributors of smartphone that are mostly found in the hands of Nigerians especially youths.
According to the latest research report from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service, the Nigerian handset market grew by a modest 6% in CY 2017. More so, the statistics of smartphone shipment into the country show that majority of the market volume capture by specific brands in Nigeria.

On this, Anshika Jain, Research Analyst with Counterpoint’s Market Monitor said:
“The top 2 OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) – Samsung and Transsion Group (its brands include Tecno, Itel and Infinix) captured two-thirds of the total smartphone market. Samsung still retains the top position with more than one-third share in the total smartphone market. While in the feature phone segment, the market is dominated by a single OEM with 76% share. This highlights the dominance of Chinese players in the feature phone market”.

Thus, the major contributors to the penetration are SAMSUNG, TECNO, ITEL, INFINIX, NOKIA, as the top 5.

CONCLUSION:
Study revealed that smartphone usage among students in higher institutions has positive influence on their communication pattern. The study further showed that majority of the respondents used their smartphone for social activities and related functions. This research also gives credit to the top contributors to this penetration, with precision to Nigeria. However, there would be no need for further influx of these device but rather an improved version of the already existing devices.

Smart phone is essential to the almost everyone.... Even there are disadvantages but I tend to look more on the advantages 'cos the advantages are much more than disadvantages