Mobile is central to discovery and buying, but statistics about phones often count different things: people, subscriptions, website visits, transactions, or ad dollars. They should not be mixed into one claim about a brand's own customers. The figures below are dated and linked to the organizations that measured them. Use them to frame questions for a mobile experience audit, then rely on your own analytics for campaign decisions.
Four useful benchmarks
U.S. ownership
Pew Research Center's 2025 survey found 91% of U.S. adults owned a smartphone; that is people surveyed, not website traffic.
Holiday shopping
Adobe reported that mobile devices generated 54.5% of U.S. online retail revenue in November-December 2024.
Global connectivity
ITU estimated about 6 billion people, or 74% of the world, used the internet in 2025; internet use is not identical to mobile use.
5G subscriptions
ITU estimated roughly 3 billion 5G subscriptions in 2025, about one-third of mobile broadband subscriptions; subscriptions are not unique people.
Do not overread broad numbers
Adobe's holiday figure is a share of U.S. online retail revenue during a seasonal period, not a global all-year mobile conversion rate. A grocery service, B2B software vendor, and local clinic can have very different device mixes. Pew's ownership survey measures adults in the United States; it does not tell you which channel a customer used for a particular purchase. ITU's global estimates describe connectivity, not willingness to view an advertisement.
IAB and PwC reported $258.6 billion in U.S. internet advertising revenue for 2024 and $294.6 billion for 2025. Those totals include many formats and devices. They show the scale of digital advertising, not a return on any individual mobile campaign. If a source offers a click-through or push-notification benchmark, check its sample, geography, industry, period, and opt-in rules before applying it to a different business.
Turn the data into a practical test
Open the most important customer journey on a real phone: the first search result, landing page, product or service detail, form, checkout, confirmation, and support path. Measure loading, readability, accessibility, unexpected redirects, and the number of steps needed to finish. Break your own analytics down by device and channel without assuming every device classification is perfect.
Run a small experiment on a specific friction point, such as a confusing form or poorly cropped image. Compare completed actions, qualified leads, or successful support outcomes rather than only impressions. Mobile-first design should still work on desktop and with assistive technology. Revisit external statistics when new reports are published, and label the year and denominator whenever a number appears in a presentation or article.