Connectivity and 5G planning
As of March 2021, only eight percent of users in the United Kingdom reported having access to 5G mobile service, while the majority had a 4G service on their smartphones. However, infrastructural improvements and new projects that will allow UK users to access fast mobile internet are in planning: in 2025, the cumulative costs of deploying 5G enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) in the United Kingdom will reach almost 11 billion euros. It is projected that the share of 5G mobile connections in the UK will increase to almost 60 percent by 2025.Mobile demographics
As the UK population ages, an increase in tech-savvy mobile internet users is to be expected: as of March 2021, the digital population of the United Kingdom included approximately 10.6 million unique users on smartphones aged 55 or older. By comparison, UK users aged between 18 and 24 years who accessed the internet via smartphones amounted to 5.3 million. Internet access via desktop only was more common among users aged 55 or above, while an average of 33 percent of UK users accessed the internet only on mobile. The overall smartphone usage rate was high among men and women alike: as of May 2021, 94 percent of female internet users in the UK accessed the net via smartphones, while 93 percent of male users did the same.Mobile apps and social media
As of the end of 2020, social media and instant messaging were the most popular app categories for UK users: approximately 88.6 percent of the country’s digital population used social networking apps and chat apps. According to a 2020 survey, activities that kept mobile users social and connected appeared to occupy a special spot in their day-to-day life: chatting online was indicated as a regular activity by approximately six in 10 respondents, and social media daily visits interested 37 percent of mobile users.With the great majority of all active social media users in the UK being also mobile social media users, it does not come as a surprise that mobile-first social apps like Snapchat and TikTok have experienced such great popularity for users in the country. In October 2021, TikTok generated around 527 thousand downloads from the Google Play Store, as well as 446 thousand from iPhone users in the country. British preference for TikTok video content spans from the educational videos, to ASMR content, to of course, cats on the internet: in 2021, the most watched TikTok video in the UK was “proving that cats rule,” by users @mmeowmmia, with close to 185 million views.
