Why one report says Africa’s phone market is growing and another says it is shrinking

Counterpoint Research says smartphone shipments across the Middle East and Africa fell 7% year on year in the first quarter of 2026, according to its latest Market Monitor. That is the region’s first quarterly decline after a strong 2025, and on its own it reads like a clean reversal.

But last week, we reported the opposite. Working from Omdia’s numbers, we wrote that Africa’s smartphone shipments grew 3% in the same quarter. Two respected firms, the same three months, opposite headlines. Neither is wrong. The difference is what each one is counting, and understanding it tells you more about the market than either figure alone.

The word doing the heavy lifting is “MEA”

Counterpoint measures the Middle East and Africa together. Omdia’s report covered Africa on its own. That single difference flips the sign. The Middle East is where the memory crisis and a regional conflict are biting hardest right now, with shipping costs climbing and consumer confidence weakening. When you bundle the Gulf and the wider Middle East in with Africa, the combined total turns negative. Strip the Middle East out, as Omdia did, and Africa was still growing modestly.

So the honest reading of Counterpoint’s 7% drop is not “Africa collapsed.” It is closer to “the Middle East dragged the combined region down while Africa held up.” Both pictures are true at the same time.

You can see the same split inside the brand numbers. Counterpoint has Samsung growing 19% in MEA. Omdia had Samsung down 1% in Africa alone. Counterpoint puts HONOR at plus 154% in MEA, while Omdia logged plus 101% in Africa. The directions agree, but the Gulf premium market pushes the combined figures higher. Where the two firms diverge, the Middle East is usually the reason.

Who is up, who is down

Counterpoint’s share board for MEA shows Samsung extending its lead, moving from 23% a year ago to 27%, on 19% shipment growth. TECNO slipped from 20% to 17%. Xiaomi fell from 14% to 11%. Apple edged up from 6% to 8%. Infinix dropped from 7% to 5%. The standout is HONOR, which climbed from 4% to 10% and now sits just behind Xiaomi as a named brand in the region.

Samsung holding the top spot is not new. We already covered how Samsung overtook TECNO in Counterpoint’s Q4 2025 MEA data, jumping to a 28% share by front-loading stock ahead of rising component costs. What is new is that Samsung kept the crown through a quarter where the whole region went negative. Stable pricing, deeper inventories, a broad premium range that limits its exposure to memory costs, and the new Galaxy S26 launch all helped.

It is worth keeping three Samsung figures straight for the same quarter, because they come from different scopes. Counterpoint has Samsung down about 6% globally, where a late Galaxy S26 launch and a weak entry-level showing cost it the top spot to Apple, yet up 19% in MEA. Omdia, measuring Africa alone, has it down 1%. The Gulf is where Samsung is winning.

The number that matters for Kenya

The clearest African signal in Counterpoint’s release is not a brand. It is the entry tier. Phones priced between $50 and $99, around KES 6,500 to KES 13,000, saw shipments fall 41% year on year. That is the band most exposed to both the memory crunch and the conflict, and it is the band most of Kenya buys in.

This lines up with what we have been tracking locally. Omdia put Kenya’s own market down 16% in the quarter, as rising prices pushed people to hold onto phones longer. Counterpoint’s wider point fits: across the region, purchases are now driven more by need than by the urge to upgrade.

The release also flags strong premiumisation, with 5G shipments up 42% and AI-capable phones up 64%. Read carefully, that growth sits almost entirely at $400 and above, roughly KES 52,000 and up. Almost nobody in Kenya buys there. So the AI and premium story in this report is largely a Gulf story, not a Kenyan one. The part of the market that serves ordinary Kenyan buyers is the part that shrank.

What to watch next

Counterpoint expects Q2 to be worse, citing a lack of sales-driving occasions. The likely reason is timing. Ramadan and Eid fell inside Q1 this year, which leaves the next quarter without a major selling season. IDC is gloomier still, forecasting MEA shipments to fall about 23% across all of 2026 as the memory shortage deepens.

The practical takeaway is simple. Watch the bottom of the price ladder. If entry-level stock keeps thinning and prices keep creeping up, the squeeze on first-time and budget buyers is where you will feel this report in real life, long before it shows up in a flagship launch. And when you next see a headline saying the regional market is up or down, check whether it says “Africa” or “MEA” before you trust the direction.