Mobile Phone Usage Statistics 2026: Ownership, Data and 5G

Mobile-cellular subscriptions reached 9.2 billion worldwide in 2025, or 112 for every 100 inhabitants, according to the International Telecommunication Union. That total counts active connections rather than human beings, which is the distinction most mobile phone usage statistics blur. Measured per person instead, 82% of individuals aged 10 years or older own a mobile phone, and the two figures answer very different questions.

The mobile phone usage statistics below cover subscriptions, ownership, data consumption, 5G rollout and coverage. Sources are ITU’s Facts and Figures 2025, Ericsson’s Mobility Report, Pew Research Center’s 2025 US survey, StatCounter and GSMA. The sharpest divides now sit in how much data people move, not in whether they hold a handset.

Key Takeaways

• According to ITU, mobile broadband accounts for 89% of all mobile subscriptions, up from less than 50% in 2015, which tracks the retirement of voice-only plans.
• According to ITU, Africa records 66% mobile phone ownership against only 36% internet use, a difference of 30 percentage points.
• Ericsson measured the average active smartphone user at 22 GB of mobile data per month at the end of 2025.
• 5G subscriptions sit close to 3.3 billion after 155 million were added in the second quarter of 2026.
• Per ITU coverage estimates, 5G networks reach 55% of the world’s population, but only 4% of people in low-income countries.
• Pew Research Center puts smartphone-only internet use at 16% of US adults, up from 8% in 2013.

Editor’s Choice

• Global subscriptions: 9.2 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions in 2025.
• Personal ownership: 82% of individuals aged 10 years or older.
• People online: ITU counts 6 billion, or 74% of the world’s population.
• Monthly network traffic: Ericsson measured traffic that exceeded 220 EB in Q2 2026.
• Video share of traffic: per Ericsson, around 75% of all mobile data traffic at the end of 2025.
• Economic contribution: according to GSMA, $7.6 trillion in 2025, equivalent to 6.4% of GDP.

How Many Mobile Phones Are There Worldwide?

• ITU counts mobile-cellular subscriptions at 9.2 billion in 2025, or 112 per 100 inhabitants, so the planet holds more connections than residents.
• Mobile broadband reached 99 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, close to parity with population.
• The broadband share of all mobile subscriptions climbed to 89%, up from less than 50% in 2015.
• Personal ownership sits lower than the subscription count, at 82% of individuals aged 10 years or older.
• Internet use trails ownership again, at 74% of the world’s population, or 6 billion people, up from 71% and 5.8 billion in 2024.
• The gap between those three numbers is the single most misread thing in this topic. A subscription count above 100 per 100 people does not mean everyone has a phone; it means some people carry two, and some connections belong to tablets, cars, and metering equipment rather than to anyone at all.
• Multiple subscriptions per person are explicit in the ITU methodology: many individuals hold multiple subscriptions, and some subscriptions belong to connected devices rather than individuals.

Source: ITU Facts and Figures 2025

About This Data

The figures here are compiled from 11 primary sources. They are five ITU Facts and Figures 2025 chapters, three Ericsson Mobility Report releases, the Pew Research Center Mobile Fact Sheet, StatCounter GlobalStats, and GSMA’s Mobile Economy 2026. Publication dates run from November 2025 to August 2026. A source is qualified only if it published the figure freely and measured it directly. No paywalled market-research estimate appears below. Figures are updated when those sources publish new editions.

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Mobile Phone Subscriptions per 100 People by Income Group

• High-income countries run 142 mobile-cellular subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, twice the level in low-income countries at 70 per 100.
• The CIS region posts the highest penetration anywhere, at 159 subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, or 1.7 times the level in Africa.
• Africa sits at 92 mobile-cellular subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, still close to one connection per person.
• On mobile broadband specifically, the spread widens: the Americas region has 132 mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants, compared to 56 per 100 in Africa.

Recent Developments

• Q2 2026: 155 million new 5G subscriptions were added, bringing the total close to 3.3 billion.
• Q2 2026: mobile network data traffic rose 23% against the same quarter of 2025 and exceeded 220 EB per month.
• Q2 2026: 4G subscriptions declined by 62 million to around 4.5 billion as subscribers migrated upward.
• End of 2025: 80 service providers had completely finished shutting down their 3G networks, and 46 had fully turned off all 2G services.
• 17 November 2025: ITU reported that the world’s online population grew by more than 240 million people during 2025.
• August 2026: According to StatCounter, mobile stood at 49.36% of worldwide platform market share against 49.11% for desktop.

Phone Ownership Against Internet Use

• Africa shows the widest split anywhere: 66% of the population own a mobile phone while only 36% are online, a difference of 30 percentage points.
• The Arab States region runs 14 percentage points higher on mobile phone ownership than on internet use.
• Asia-Pacific has almost closed the gap, at four percentage points greater ownership than internet use.
• Gender splits the same way: 78% of females and 87% of males aged 10 and over own a mobile phone, a gender parity score of 0.90.
• The gender gap is narrowing slowly. Women are 10% less likely to own a mobile phone than men, down from 12% in 2022.
• Low-income economies remain the outlier on ownership, at only 53% of the population aged 10 years and over.
• Urban and rural connectivity diverge on the same axis, with 85% in urban areas online versus 58% in rural areas.

Source: ITU Facts and Figures 2025

That gap column is the number worth carrying away. Handset penetration is close to saturated in most of the world, so the remaining connectivity problem is no longer the distribution of devices. It is the cost of data, the availability of a network worth connecting to, and whoever in the household actually holds the phone.

How Much Mobile Data the Average Smartphone Uses

• The global average active smartphone used 22 GB per month at the end of 2025, forecast to reach 42 GB in 2031.
• The India region leads consumption worldwide, at 37 GB per active smartphone per month at the end of 2025, heading for 70 GB in 2031.
• Sub-Saharan Africa anchors the other end, at 5 GB per active smartphone per month, rising to 12 GB in 2031.
• Western Europe and North America sit level with each other at 25 GB per active smartphone per month.
• Ericsson puts Western Europe’s traffic per active smartphone on a 15% compound annual growth rate from 2025 to 2031, against a 12% global average.
• Income tracks intensity more tightly than it tracks ownership: a typical user in a high-income country now generates nearly eight times more mobile data than one in a low-income country.

By the numbers: Ericsson measured 22 GB of mobile data per active smartphone per month globally at the end of 2025, against 37 GB in the India region and 5 GB in Sub-Saharan Africa. A seven-fold spread across regions that all count as connected suggests coverage maps have stopped being the useful measure of digital participation.

What Uses the Most Mobile Data

• Video is the answer, and by a wide margin: video traffic accounted for around 75% of all mobile data traffic at the end of 2025.
• Long-form and short-form video services both feed that share, which is why YouTube and Netflix sit at the center of any mobile data budget.
• Growth is coming from two directions at once. Traffic growth is being driven by both rising smartphone subscriptions and increasing average data volume per subscription, fueled primarily by increased video content consumption.
• Telegram belongs in the same messaging category.
• Feed-based Social media has shifted toward autoplaying video, which moves it from the light column into the heavy one.
• Streaming and gaming sit inside the wider entertainment sector and reach users through mobile apps rather than browsers.

Practical read for anyone watching a data cap: the three-quarters figure means video settings, not app count, decide whether a plan lasts the month. Everything else on a phone is a rounding error against an hour of high-resolution streaming.

Global Mobile Data Traffic Growth

• Year-on-year growth accelerated rather than flattening: mobile network data traffic rose 23% between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026.
• Quarter-on-quarter, the increase was around 6% between Q1 2026 and Q2 2026.
• Total volume passed a new mark, with total monthly global mobile network data traffic exceeding 220 EB in Q2 2026.
• The 2025 exit rate was 146 EB per month for mobile data and 203 EB per month including fixed wireless access.
• The long-run forecast is a growth factor of around 2.2 to reach 328 EB per month in 2031.
• Growth is concentrated geographically. The year-on-year growth in Q2 2026 was mainly driven by continued strong growth in India and North America.
• Immersive formats are the wildcard in any traffic forecast, and Augmented Reality (AR) adoption is the variable to watch.

Source: Ericsson Mobility Report 2026

5G Subscriptions and the 4G Decline

• The 5G base crossed a round number this year: 155 million new subscriptions in Q2 2026 brought the total close to 3.3 billion.
• The prior year was bigger still, with around 660 million 5G subscriptions added globally during 2025.
• North America leads penetration at 79%, followed by Northeast Asia at 60%, Western Europe at 54% and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries at 53%.
• Measured against mobile broadband rather than all subscriptions, 36% of mobile broadband subscriptions are now 5G.
• Deployment is broad rather than deep, since around 390 service providers have launched commercial 5G services and more than 90 of those have launched 5G standalone.

Every generation below 5G is now shrinking in the same quarter. The sunset schedule has moved from announcement to execution. By the end of 2025, 80 service providers had completely finished shutting down their 3G networks, while 46 service providers had fully turned off all 2G services.

Source: Ericsson Mobility Report 2026

Mobile Network Coverage Gaps

• 5G population coverage reached 55% of the world’s population in 2025, up from the early commercialisation stage in 2019.
• The income split is stark: 5G reaches 84% of people in high-income countries but only 4% of people in low-income countries.
• Europe leads the regional table at 74% of the population covered, ahead of Asia-Pacific at 70% and the Americas at 60%.
• The bottom of that table is the CIS region at 8% of the population covered by 5G, with Africa at 12% and the Arab States region at 13%.
• Older networks carry the load elsewhere, with 4G available to 93% of the world’s population but only 56% in low-income countries.
• The residual gap is small and stubborn: coverage by 3G or higher has reached 96% of the world’s population, leaving approximately 312 million people without any mobile broadband network.
• Urban and rural coverage diverge sharply, with 66% of urban residents worldwide inside 5G coverage against 40% of rural residents, a gap of 26 percentage points.

Layered coverage tells a different story from the 5G headline. Reading the generations together shows how thin the layer is that still depends on networks carriers are actively retiring. That is the tension underneath the sunset numbers above.

Source: ITU Facts and Figures 2025

Smartphone Ownership in the United States

• Cellphone ownership is effectively universal, at 98% of US adults.
• Smartphone ownership sits at about 91% of US adults, up from just 35% in the Center’s first survey of smartphone ownership conducted in 2011.
• Younger adults are already at the ceiling, with 97 in every 100 adults aged 18-29 owning a smartphone and 96 in every 100 at ages 30-49.
• The remaining headroom is concentrated in older cohorts, falling to 90 in every 100 at ages 50-64 and 78 in every 100 among adults 65 and older.
• Feature phones survive mainly among older users: 16 in every 100 adults aged 65 and older own a cellphone but not a smartphone, against 2 in every 100 at ages 18-29.
• The measurement basis matters here, since Pew Research Center surveyed 5,022 U.S. adults from Feb. 5 to June 18, 2025.

US device-level detail sits alongside our wider smartphone coverage. The handset-brand split behind these ownership rates moves far more slowly than the ownership rate itself.

Smartphone-Dependent Internet Users

• Smartphone-only internet use covers 16% of US adults, meaning they own a smartphone but do not subscribe to a home broadband service.
• The share has doubled since the series began, from 8% in 2013.
• The peak was earlier than most people assume, at 20% in 2018.
• The measure had been flat for three years before this reading, at 15% in 2021, 2023, and 2024.
• Dependency is not evenly distributed. Reliance on smartphones for online access is especially common among Americans with lower household incomes and those with less formal education.

Why it matters: Pew puts 16% of US adults in the smartphone-only bracket. Coverage was never the binding constraint for that group; price was. Any service that assumes a desktop, a large screen or an uncapped connection is invisible to roughly one adult in six.

Mobile Against Desktop for Web Traffic

• The two platforms are now effectively tied. StatCounter measured mobile at 49.36% of worldwide platform market share in August 2026, against 49.11% for desktop.
• Tablets remain a rounding error at 1.54% of worldwide platform market share.
• The widely repeated claim that mobile owns a clear majority of web traffic does not survive contact with the measurement. Mobile leads, but by a quarter of a percentage point, which is well inside the range where the sampling method decides the winner.

What Mobile Contributes to the Global Economy

• Mobile technologies and services generated $7.6 trillion for the global economy in 2025, equivalent to 6.4% of GDP.
• The trajectory is upward, with the industry’s economic impact projected to grow to $11.3 trillion by 2030.
• Operator strategy is shifting toward revenue rather than internal AI use cases, with 45% of operators seeing AI monetisation as a strategic priority.

Is the Smartphone Market Declining?

The answer depends on which market you mean. In the United States, smartphone ownership stood at about 91% of adults in Pew’s 2025 survey, which is closer to saturation than to decline.

Globally, the base is still expanding. Mobile broadband now accounts for 89% of all mobile subscriptions, up from less than 50% in 2015, and mobile-cellular subscriptions reached 9.2 billion in 2025. Growth has moved from adding first-time owners in rich countries to upgrading feature-phone users elsewhere.

Where to Find Reliable Mobile Phone Usage Statistics

• ITU publishes annual global and regional estimates in its Facts and Figures series, the origin of the 9.2 billion subscription count and the 112 per 100 inhabitants penetration rate.
• Ericsson publishes network-measured traffic quarterly in its Mobility Report, the source of the 22 GB monthly average per active smartphone.
• Pew Research Center runs the reference survey behind US mobile phone usage statistics, reporting about 91% smartphone ownership from a sample of 5,022 U.S. adults.
• StatCounter publishes the monthly platform market share series, including mobile at 49.36% of worldwide platform market share in August 2026.
• GSMA covers the industry’s economic footprint, putting the 2025 contribution at $7.6 trillion, or 6.4% of GDP.

All five publish freely. Anything sourced to a paywalled market-research summary rather than one of them is a restatement, and the original figure is usually available at no cost.

Conclusion

The two numbers to hold onto sit at opposite ends of the same question. There are 9.2 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions against 82% personal ownership among individuals aged 10 years or older, and the second figure is the one that describes human behavior. Between them sits the finding that matters more than either: coverage is close to universal while consumption is not, with the average active smartphone moving 22 GB a month globally and 5 GB in Sub-Saharan Africa.

That gap is where the next decade of this data will be decided. Handset distribution is a largely solved problem, and network sunsets are already retiring the generations that carried the last billion users online. The remaining differences are about affordability and what a connection is actually good for.