Argentina’s Growing Mobile Market as an Opportunity

Argentina is now the fourth largest mobile market in LATAM when measured by users.

This is the conclusion of new report just out from eMarketer and entitled “Mobile Argentina 2016: Updated Forecasts and Key Growth Trends.”

The report calculates that this year, nearly 72% of the country’s population will own at least one mobile phone. This equates to just over 31 million people. What’s more, says the report, they will use it at least once per month.

Argentina is fourth in LATAM, coming behind countries all with larger populations. Brazil has 133.5m users, Mexico 84.4m and Colombia 33m.

In terms of mobile phone penetration when compared to population, Argentina is second only to Chile which has a near 74% penetration level.

In terms of growth, Argentina is regarded as a mature market and mobile phone user growth is set too slow until the end of the decade. Growth in 2015 was 2.2% and this compares with forecast growth of 2.1% in 2016, 1.7% in 2017, 1.6% in 2018, 1.5% in 2019 and 1.4% in 2020, as shown on the graph below.

Another feature of the Argentinian market is that over the last five years, users have been making the switch to 3G and 4G devices. This is reflected in the forecast which predicts that by this year, the number of smartphone users in the country will have reached 16.2 million people, a rise of 16.9%. This accounts for just over half of all mobile users in the country.

It’s also predicted that smartphone penetration will only gain real penetration in 2020, when the number of users will represent 70% of the total mobile phone users.

Reference: eMarketer