Key Features

Mobile claims a huge share of time spent in Brazil, and smartphone ownership is near saturation.

• Smartphone ownership among internet users ages 16 to 64 rose further this year, to 98.4% in H1 2020, according to GlobalWebIndex. PC ownership declined marginally to 67.7%, but levels rose in line with higher income levels.
• Internet users in Brazil spent a remarkable 5 hours, 11 minutes (5:11) daily on mobile devices in H1 2020, vs. 4:28 on PCs and tablets. Year over year, mobile time increased more than PC time did.
• Much of that mobile time is devoted to social media, at 3:40 daily in H1 2020. (GlobalWebIndex includes YouTube in its social media category, which tends to increase time spent as well as social user numbers.)
• Online news content also accounted for a major share of respondents’ time on a typical day, at 2:29—10 minutes more than the average in H1 2019, and about four times the 37 minutes daily devoted to print press. It’s likely that the pandemic contributed to this increase, as consumers searched online for the latest news and other relevant information. If anything, that need will grow more acute, as the country deals with more than 5.0 million infections and 150,000 virus-related deaths.