Federica Laricchia
Research expert covering the global consumer technology industry
Smartphones in Brazil - statistics & facts
Just a couple of decades ago, it was hard to imagine a device incorporating both phone and computer capabilities – the smartphone. After their introduction, smartphones have grown to be a significant part of our everyday lives all around the world, from keeping in touch with family and friends to surfing the internet, from watching videos to listening to music. The same can be said for Brazil, where the telecommunications industry keeps growing every year, including revenues generated by mobile telephony services.
The Brazilian smartphone market is stalling
From mobile phone production, sales and revenue generated, the Brazilian smartphone market has experienced a somewhat negative trend. Particularly, the number of mobile phone unit sales has decreased in the past decade and started showing signs of recovery in 2022, when around 15 million mobile phones were sold. Furthermore, the smartphone market revenue has been stagnant in the same period, with such number forecast to remain stable until 2028. Nonetheless, the Brazilian smartphone market is a hub for many smartphone vendors, including Samsung, Apple, and Motorola. Particularly, in 2022, Samsung occupied over 40 percent of the Latin American country’s smartphone market, followed by Motorola and Apple, which both hold somewhat lower shares. Given the above-mentioned vendors’ predominance, it is easy to guess which smartphone operating system dominates the Brazilian mobile operating system market – Android. As of 2023, Android held a share of almost 80 percent, whereas Apple iOS holding most of the remaining share of the market.Smartphones for everybody to perform many different activities
Given their many benefits and their importance in our more and more digitalized and interconnected world, the number of smartphone users and of mobile phone subscriptions has rocketed in recent years. In 2022, the Portuguese-speaking country counted over 210 million cellular subscriptions, a number forecast to keep increasing in the near future. Indeed, it is estimated that the smartphone penetration rate in Brazil will reach over 70 percent by 2028. But what do Brazilians mainly do with smartphones? As mentioned above, smartphones can perform a wide range of tasks. As of 2023, smartphones were the most common electronic device used to access the internet in Brazil, and probably more surprisingly, also the most used device to play video games, followed by PCs and gaming consoles.
