Mobile Internet Uptake Leaps Forward Again in Mexico

Mexico will be home to 65.1 million internet users—equivalent to 53.8% of its population—in 2015, a 9.4% year-over-year expansion, eMarketer estimates. A considerable chunk of that growth will come in mobile form, with the base of mobile phone internet users set to grow 17.5% to reach 53.0 million this year. Though mobile phone internet user growth is bound for lower rates as the market matures—dropping to just 6.0% in 2019—the total will reach 73.4 million, or 58.3% of residents, by the end of the forecast period.

eMarketer predicts the number of Mexico’s mobile phone users of any age who access the internet via mobile phone (browser or app) as a portion of internet users will improve 5.6 percentage points in just one year, from 75.8% in 2014 to 81.4% in 2015. By comparison, the same metric will rise only 5 points over the ensuing four years to reach 86.4% in 2019.

Predictably, mobile internet traffic has increased in parallel with user expansion in Mexico. According to comScore, mobile internet traffic including smartphones and tablets represented 27.6% of web usage in the country in March 2015, a 7.3-percentage-point improvement compared with March 2014. Though laptops and desktops still represented 71.7% of internet traffic in the country during the same period, that share was down an almost identical 7.1 points.

Zooming in on the mobile space, Samsung continued to consolidate its dominance of the smartphone market, accounting for 22.1% of smartphones in use in Mexico in March 2015. Motorola and LG were competing closely for second place, with respective smartphone user slices of 14.8% and 12.9%.

Apple, which does not sell modestly priced smartphones, came in fourth, at 10.3% share. The Cupertino-based firm is likely to see its market share in Mexico reduced further before stabilizing in the single digits given that its well-to-do target demographic already registers high smartphone uptake rates, leaving future smartphone user expansion to the growing inclusion of consumers from lower socioeconomic rungs seeking affordable devices.

Meanwhile, among operating systems, Android held a commanding lead, powering 82.5% of internet traffic via smartphones in Mexico in March 2015. iOS and Windows trailed at considerable distances, with respective shares of 10.3% and 4.3%.

Courtesy of eMarketer