Middle East and Africa (MEA) smartphone shipments are set to total 155 million units in 2015 after increasing 66% on year to more than 36 million units the first quarter of the year, according to IDC.

In the first quarter, smartphones accounted for 63% and 47%, respectively, of total handsets shipped in the Middle East and Africa. This comes at the expense of feature phones, which suffered a year-on-year decline of around 20% in both regions and will make up just 27% of the overall MEA handset market by the end of 2019.

The growth in smartphones in the MEA region is being spurred by Google's Android and Apple's iOS, with the two platforms accounting for over 95% of the smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2015.

The strong growth in the region's smartphone market is also being driven by the emergence of low-priced devices that are primarily powered by Android. Almost half of all the smartphones shipped across Africa (45.1%) in the first quarter were priced below US$100, while almost 75% fall under US$200. Meanwhile, smartphones priced at US$100-200 also accounted for the biggest market share in the Middle East during the quarter.