The mobile phone Facebook audience is reaching a plateau in Australia, according to eMarketer’s latest estimates of mobile phone internet usage and behaviors around the world. eMarketer forecasts that the number of people who use Facebook on their mobile phones will rise just 4.0% in Australia this year, after several years of double-digit audience growth.
Nearly 9 million people in Australia will be mobile phone Facebook users this year, we estimate. That amounts to close to 81% of the country’s Facebook users. As mobile phone Facebook usage continues to inch upward through 2019, that percentage will rise to 87.5%, or 50.6% of mobile phone users and 42.7% of the total population of the country.
By that last statistic, mobile phone Facebook users as a share of the total population, Australia is in first place in Asia-Pacific. This year, 38.3% of the total population of Australia will use a mobile phone to visit Facebook at least once per month. That compares with 24.5% of those in Indonesia?the No. 2 country in Asia-Pacific?and is far ahead of the worldwide average of 14.2%. (Note: The worldwide average is depressed due to Facebook being unavailable in China.)
Mobile phone Facebook users will account for 85.7% of Australia’s mobile phone social network audience this year, eMarketer estimates. That’s behind both India and Indonesia, where more than nine in 10 mobile phone social network users are on Facebook, but still ahead of the worldwide average of 65.7%.
India and Indonesia are also ahead in terms of the percentage of Facebook users who are mobile. Again, penetration in those countries is above 90%, and in Japan reaches nearly 82%, vs. Australia’s 80.9% rate, which is tied with South Korea for last place in Asia-Pacific.
eMarketer bases all of its forecasts on a multipronged approach that focuses on both worldwide and local trends in the economy, technology and population, along with company-, product-, country- and demographic-specific trends, and trends in specific consumer behaviors. We analyze quantitative and qualitative data from a variety of research firms, government agencies, media outlets and company reports, weighting each piece of information based on methodology and soundness.
In addition, every element of each eMarketer forecast fits within the larger matrix of all its forecasts, with the same assumptions and general framework used to project figures in a wide variety of areas. Regular re-evaluation of each forecast means those assumptions and framework are constantly updated to reflect new market developments and other trends.
