South Africa’s cell phone market hit a new milestone of 50-million connections at the end of 2008, according to new preliminary research by World Wide Worx, which also predicted further robust growth ahead.

The 2009 annual Mobility study, which is being backed by FNB and BlackBerry developer Research In Motion (RIM), also found that only 68% of the 50-million connections represented individual users.

“The findings of the preliminary research for the annual Mobility survey confirm that South Africa’s cellular market continues to enjoy robust growth, even with market penetration at around 100%,” says Deon Liebenberg, regional director for Sub Sahara Africa at RIM.

The research shows the average number of active cellphone accounts, per cellphone user in South Africa, has grown steadily since pre-paid accounts were introduced in 1996, from an average of 1 SIM per user in 1997 to 1.47 per user at the end of 2008.

“It’s become clear that many pre-paid users have a SIM card for each major network, to avoid incurring the interconnection fee charged for calls between networks,” says World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck.