The General Authority for Regulating the Telecommunications Sector (TRA) has revealed statistics for the fourth quarter of 2014 on the nation’s most popular mobile phone handsets, social networking platforms and applications websites. Investigating the current state of the market, the report reveals the market share of mobile phones in the UAE by manufacturer and model.

The iPhone 5s continues to be the most common mobile handset in the UAE, followed by the Nokia 105/1050. Both Samsung and Apple recorded an increase in their market shares. While, the iPhone 6 is the fourth most commonly used smartphone in the UAE.

The report indicates that between August 2014 and December 2014, 61 percent of handsets registered on the UAE’s networks were Smartphones. Th iPhone 5s was the most commonly used Smartphone in the UAE with 4 percent of total handsets registered on UAE networks. The iPhone 5 was the second most popular Smartphone making up 2.4 percent of the market share. The third most commonly used Smartphone was the Samsung S III (2.1 percent), followed by the newly released handset, iPhone 6 (1.7 percent), iPhone 4S (1.6 percent), Samsung S4 LTE (1.5 percent), Samsung Note 3 (1.3 percent), and Samsung S5 (1 percent). Blackberry handsets disappeared in Q4 2014 from being within the 15 most commonly used Smartphone handsets in the UAE.

The report indicates that 40 percent of all handsets registered on UAE networks were manufactured by Nokia, although this figure has been declining over time. This was followed by Samsung (24.3 percent), Apple (11.4 percent), BlackBerry (5 percent), Sony (1.2 percent), HTC (1.2 percent), then the newly emerged manufacturer Lenovo (1.2 percent) and Huawei (0.9 percent).

The report also provides information on the most popular mobile operating systems used in the UAE. Android was the most commonly used operating system in the UAE as of Q4-2014, while the use of Symbian has been declining over time. The market share of iOS is steadily increasing while the market share of RIM (the operating system for Blackberry) is progressively declining.

During the period from 1 August 2014 to 31 December 2014, UAE users of Smartphones and fixed Internet services visited various applications websites. Apple iTunes was the most commonly visited applications website by far, followed by Samsung Apps, Nokia OVI, Android Applications and finally Blackberry App World.

UAE Smartphone and fixed Internet users made a total of 16 billion visits to social networking websites during the period indicated in the report. Visits to Facebook accounted for 91 percent of total visits to social networking sites, followed by Twitter with 6.6 percent of visits, followed by LinkedIn, Maktoob and MySpace.