Mobile Internet Statistics UK [2024]

We use mobile phones daily, and yes, you can say that we’re all somewhat addicted to our smartphones. It’s worth noting that 99% of the UK population owns a mobile device, but the device itself is not that attractive; it’s the internet connection that makes us want to scroll through our social media feed for hours.

For most people, a mobile phone without an internet connection is just a box that allows you to call your friends or send messages to your loved ones. Mobile internet statistics UK will show you how much time the UK users spend on the internet and what active mobile internet users do while browsing the web. 

Since you now know how many people own a smartphone in the UK, it’s time to take a look into other vital elements of these statistics. 

Mobile Internet Statistics UK

Despite not being a mobile-first market, the United Kingdom has witnessed high levels of mobile internet usage in recent years. It was one of the countries with the highest mobile internet penetration rate in 2021.

In today’s world, most people can’t imagine what their lives would look like without mobile internet. In 2021, the UK smartphone penetration rate reached 91.43%. In 2026, this figure is expected to grow to 93.8%.

Internet usage statistics UK show that every minute spent online is spent scrolling through social media. If you’re wondering how many people in the UK own a smartphone, mobile phone ownership statistics UK show that 87% of all adults have at least one smartphone. 

Yahoo is second on the list of leading search engines ranked by market share in the UK, and their market share was 0.89% at the beginning of April 2021. After Yahoo, came the DuckDuckGo search engine with 0.56%. The search engine with the lowest marketing share in April 2021 was Yandex (0.05%). 

Mobile Internet Usage Growth Trends

This means that there would be an increase of 16.22 million users compared to 2015, when the UK had nearly 49 million active mobile internet users. 

Forecasts for mobile internet penetration in the UK show that there will be an increase of roughly 3% by the end of 2022. However, in 2025, the share of monthly active mobile internet users will reach almost 94%. 

In May 2020, the numbers dropped to 45.77% but climbed to 44.85 in December 2020. By the end of April 2021, 46.33% of active internet users used their mobile phone to access the internet. 

Although people prefer to use their smartphones over other devices, less than a quarter of all participants reported that they used a media streaming device more than before the pandemic has started. 

Demographics of Mobile Internet Users in the UK

Statistics that show internet usage by age in the UK tell us that Internet access via desktop was more popular among users aged 55 and up. An average of 33% of UK users only used their phones to access the internet.

A slightly higher share of the male population (80%) aged 16 or above, accessed the internet via mobile phone in the UK. 

How are People Using Mobile Internet in the UK

Now that we know how many people use the mobile internet in the UK, it’s time to determine how are they using it. In December 2020, mobile accounted for roughly 47% of web traffic in the UK. In the same year, 43% of UK shoppers used mobile to make an online purchase. 

Mobile internet statistics UK show that 8% of active mobile internet users tend to visit travel websites, and 14% of them use the internet on their phones to check the weather. 

Most Popular Websites and Apps

The most popular types of websites in 2021 in the UK were chat and social media sites. Between January and April 2020, there were nearly 13 million adult TikTok users in the UK. In November 2020, Zoom reached 1.7 million users on Android and iOS devices. 

Top Mobile Internet Providers

Other leading Internet providers in the UK are Vodafone, Three (3) and O2. Between 2018 and 2021, Vodafone’s revenue decreased from 18.2 to 16.9 pounds per user in the UK, which means that EE will continue to be one of the most reliable mobile services in the UK. 

It’s vital to mention that EE’s 4G is available 94.5% of the time for UK users. Keep in mind that the speed requirement for the 4G/LTE service is 100 megabits per second, which makes it 4x faster than 3G. Ranked second was O2, which offered 4G availability 88.5% of the time. 

The average download speed for Vodafone users was 20.4 Mbps, making it the second-best mobile phone internet provider in the country. 

With an average upload speed of 8.8 Mbps, EE offered the fastest upload speed. Vodafone came in second with an average upload speed of 7.7 Mbps.

In 2018, the monthly mobile data traffic in the UK summed up to 211 gigabytes, which means that the data uploaded or downloaded on mobile networks in the UK doubled by the end of 2020. In 2019, the monthly data traffic in the UK amounted to 292 gigabytes. 

Conclusion

The internet makes our lives easier, and the fact that we can access it on our mobile devices makes us very lucky. We will inevitably continue to use them for browsing the web in the future, or at least until we invent more practical devices that can help us search for information faster.

Mobile internet statistics UK show that Britons depend on the internet, but it’s safe to say that people who live in other countries spend as much time surfing the web as the British audience.