Mobile internet usage worldwide - Statistics & Facts

Mobile apps are increasingly popular in everyday activities. The two most popular app stores, Google Play and Apple’s App Store, had a total number of 2.8 and 2.2 million available apps respectively, as of March 2017. With the large volume of apps available to consumers, marketers began to focus more on mobile app retention than on acquisition alone. As of September 2017, the apps for Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube and Google were the four most popular Android apps worldwide, while Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Skype for iPhone were the apps with the highest market reach among mobile iOS users globally.

Social networking is one of the most popular activities of mobile internet users. Facebook Messenger is the second most popular mobile messaging apps behind Whatsapp, the world’s leading messaging app with more than 1.3 billion monthly active users as of July 2017. Other popular mobile messaging apps include QQ Mobile, WeChat and Skype. Mobile social media consists of social networking and mobile messaging apps.

Besides social networking, mobile internet users also more commonly use their device to watch online videos, accounting for 58 percent of digital video plays during the third quarter of 2017. Tencent Video ranks among the worldwide highest-grossing entertainment app titles in the Apple App Store, followed by iQiYi Video and Netflix. Music streaming apps have also increased in popularity, with Spotify and SoundCloud being among the most downloaded music and audio apps worldwide.

Mobile commerce has been on a continued rise with the availability of a range of online shopping preferences for consumers that include online purchases of grocery, toys, books, music, movies and video games, clothing and footwear, household appliances, consumer electronics, and so on. The average value of global online shopping orders placed using a smartphone stood at 104.63 U.S. dollars during the third quarter of 2017. In a 2016 survey, it was found that about half of mobile shoppers turn to smartphone or tablets for purchasing products for convenience; 46 percent opted for the mobile platform to save time.

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