According to the State of Broadband 2016 report, released by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of mobile subscribers grew 802.5% while that of fixed connections grew only 69.8% from 2010 to 2015.
Many may think this would correlate to a high amount of simple feature phones, but a recent surveyby S4M (Solutions for Mobile), Tapestry and Pointlogic in February 2016 claims that 90% of those surveyed were in fact smartphone owners—which means they have access to technology to listen to music or search for information.
Brazil and Mexico Leading in App Usage
In a separate Latin America study between June 2015 and June 2016 by mobile analytics and advertising firm Flurry, found that 34% of its app sessions occurred in Brazil, notably more than any other country in the region. Mexico ranked second, with about one in five app sessions, for a total of 55% of app sessions between the two largest markets in Latin America. In third place, Argentina was home to 8% of mobile app sessions.
These figures are generally in line with the overall size of Latin American mobile phone markets. eMarketer estimates that this year, 64.0 million people in Brazil will use smartphones, making up about 33.8% of the smartphone population of Latin America. Meanwhile, Mexico will be home to 44.2 million smartphone users this year—about 23.3% of the total in the region. Argentina is the No. 4 smartphone market in the region, with around 9% of users, just behind Colombia, which has about 10% of the total.’
Why Is This Important for Mobile App Marketers?
Latin America, Brazil and Mexico represent a growing market of new smartphone users. While users currently spend time in social and messaging apps, usage will expand to other categories as it has in other countries. Perhaps the most promising aspect of the growth of the mobile market in Latin America is the fact that there is much more growth to come. Smartphone penetration has yet to reach 50% but is expected to rise rapidly. The time is now to take advantage of the opportunities available in Latin America.
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