Android undoubtedly Zimbabwe’s O.S of the masses. Numbers owed to cheaper knock offs?

So WhatsApp announced earlier this year that it will stop support for quite a long list of devices. In that same regard a great many individuals with Windows Phone devices have the recurring dilemma of why app updates and new apps take just so long to land on their devices.

Android owns the smartphone realm in Zimbabwe owing to a stratospheric 75.04% of the market share. What’s interesting to note is the second largest market share, 6.71%, is owed to Nokia’s Symbian series 40 meaning to say a good number of Zimbabweans are still faithful their Asha devices and their Nokia C3s and X2s.

I would feel it is being attributed to the new Zimbabwean culture of having one high end smartphone as a main device and another low end feature phone as either their business phone or a storage device for their second SIM card. Either way the gap between Android and every other operating system combined is astronomical.

Interestingly though, a very large percentage of devices on the Zimbabwean market, 29.54% to be exact, are unknown/generic brands or imitations which are sprouting up everywhere. These are also aiding to the already healthy Android figure because of the Open Source nature of Android. These immitations are accounting for the second highest market share of smartphones in Zimbabwe with Samsung narrowly snatching a lead at 31.17%.

This is an alarming figure considering Astro, Apple, Techno,  ZTE, Huawei, Gtel also have stores locally but are either at the bottom of the list or not even there. What could be pushing Zimbabweans from prominent tried and tested vendors to these generic brands? Could it be lack of knowledge of distinguishing original and fake, or are the cheaper knock offs better value?