Brazilians Spend More Time On Smartphones Than Rest Of The World

Smartphone users in Brazil spend more time on their devices than any other country in the world, a new report has found.

Daily time spent on mobile apps globally jumped 45% between 2019 and 2021, according to a report published by market data company App Annie Intelligence.

On a daily basis, Brazilians used their smartphones for 5.4 hours on average in the second quarter of 2021. By comparison, daily smartphone use in Brazil reached 3.8 hours on average in 2019, and 4.8 hours daily in 2020.

Up until last year, Brazil was the second country in the world with the most intensive use of smartphones, behind Indonesia, which now ranks second with an average of 5.3 hours of smartphone use per day.

India ranked third in the research with a daily smartphone usage time of 4.9 hours on average, followed by South Korea (4,8 hours), Mexico (4,7 hours), Turkey (4,5 hours), Japan (4,4 hours), Canada (4,1 hours), United States (3,9 hours) and United Kingdom (3,8 hours).

A separate report on global trends, also by App Annie, highlighted areas of growth within the mobile app landscape. When it comes to the depth of engagement among the top social networking apps, the study noted that WhatsApp is the app Brazilians use the most, with an average of 30.3 hours per month in 2020 compared to 26.2 hours in 2019.

Notably, the use of TikTok in Brazil increased significantly, 14 hours in 2020 compared with 6.8 hours in 2019, growing faster than Facebook (15.6 hours per month versus 14 hours per month in 2019), Instagram (14 hours in 2020 versus 11.5 hours in 2019) and Twitter (6.4 hours per month in 2020 versus 5.1 hours in 2019).

According to the App Annie trends report, Brazil saw 75% year-over-year growth in downloads of finance apps in 2020. The average number of hours spent in such apps also increased by 45% last year.

Separate research by by consultancy Ebit/Nielsen in partnership with Brazilian fintech Bexs found that more than half of all online purchases in Brazil were made through smartphones since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.