Mobile phones are the most common gateway to the Internet and the prevalence of mobile ownership therefore provides a good indication of Internet penetration. This is not a one-to-one correspondence, however, because people other than the owner could use the phone to access the Internet (e.g. children occasionally using the phone of a parent), and some people have feature phones and/or a subscription only allowing calls.
Data show that, on average, the percentage of individuals owning a mobile phone is higher than the percentage of Internet users, in every region and every income group. Worldwide, 78 per cent of the population aged 10 and over in 2023 own a mobile phone, 11 percentage points higher than the percentage of individuals who use the Internet. This gap is shrinking in all regions, as growth in Internet use has significantly outpaced the growth of mobile phone ownership over the last three years.
In the Americas, CIS and Europe, where Internet penetration exceeds 80 per cent on average, the rate of mobile phone ownership is less than five percentage points higher than Internet use. The gap is 9 percentage points in the Asia-Pacific and 14 percentage points in the Arab States region. In the Africa region, where 63 per cent of the population own a mobile phone but only 37 per cent use the Internet, the gap is 26 percentage points.
The gender parity gap in mobile phone ownership is comparable with that in Internet use. At the global level, the gender parity score for mobile phone ownership is marginally lower (i.e., skewed against women) than it is for Internet use. As with Internet use, progress has been uneven over the past three years. Women are about 8 per cent less likely to own a mobile phone than men, down from 10 per cent in 2020. Among those not owning a mobile phone, women outnumber men by 35 per cent.