Flickr CC image courtesy of SANGONeT ICT for NGOs Conference
Arthur Goldstuck, managing director (MD) of business technology market research firm World Wide Worx, has said data released by venture capital (VC) firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) relating to South African internet and smartphone penetration is questionable.
HumanIPO reported last week KPCB’s claim 20 million South Africans had access to the internet during 2013, growing 20 per cent year-on-year.
The company also said South Africa had a smartphone penetration rate of 41 per cent, representing 20 million individuals.
However, Goldstuck said this data is erroneous.
“The KPCB presentation is incredibly valuable and useful in its quantifying and contextualising of global and regional trends. However, its local data, particularly with regard to smartphone use in Africa, is questionable,” he said.
“Our smartphone total for end of 2013 is 16.3 million, and it is based on both network-provided stats and primary research,” said Goldstuck.
He said data has regularly been conflated with population penetration, giving a skewed picture of the South African market, especially when converting to absolute numbers.
“By not having a handle on local dynamics, use of poor definitions turns into misinformation which turns into bad data. You can think of it as big data gone bad. Much the same applies to their internet data, which is even more inflated,” he said.
According to World Wide Worx, there are currently 13.8 million internet users in South Africa.
“So KPCB overstates it by at least 50 per cent,” he said.
