📋 Tender Overview
By the end of 2023, more than 9.7 million Peruvian households had a smartphone. The largest increase was recorded in rural areas, where 81.6% of families own a smartphone. The smartphone has become an essential tool for the entire population, offering a world of possibilities with just one click. Therefore, it is not surprising that the number of households with access to these devices continues to grow. According to the recent Residential Survey of Telecommunications Services (ERESTEL), conducted by the Supervisory Agency for Private Investment in Telecommunications (OSIPTEL), by the end of 2023, 92.8% of households had a smartphone.
According to the study, in the last five years, the presence of these devices in Peruvian homes went from 78% in 2019 to 92.8% in 2023, which represented an increase of 14.8 percentage points. In this way, 9,779,068 households have this important device.
Although the smartphone ownership rate grew in all geographic areas, the largest increase was recorded in rural households, reaching 81.6% in 2023, 37.5 percentage points above what was achieved five years ago (44.1%).
Meanwhile, in Metropolitan Lima, the ownership of these devices reached 98% of households, which represented an increase of 6 percentage points compared to 2019 (92%). In the rest of the urban areas, smartphone ownership rose from 82.4% to 93.2% between 2019 and 2023.
Erestel 2023 also revealed that, in the last five years, the increase in smartphone ownership was more pronounced in the DE sector, going from 51.1% in 2019 to 66.9% in 2023, a growth of 15.8 percentage points. Despite the progress, ownership of these devices is higher in the AB socioeconomic sector (90.5%) and the C segment (84.7%).
By age groups, the greatest growth in smartphone ownership in the last five years was notable among people aged 36 to 45, after reaching 88.8%, exceeding by 15.7 percentage points the figure obtained in 2019 (73.1%). However, the highest smartphone ownership is observed among people aged 24 to 29 (91.6%) and those aged 30 to 35 (91.2%).
Regarding gender, greater progress was observed in smartphone ownership among women, with an increase from 61.6% in 2019 to 74.3% in 2023; however, smartphone ownership among men remains higher, reaching 77.9% of the total at the end of 2023.
More than 94% of households had access to mobile devices to connect to the Internet
The analysis showed that 94.4% of Peruvian families had at least one mobile device to connect to the Internet, which meant an increase of 15.8 percentage points compared to 2019 (78.6%). Thus, at the end of 2023, 15.1% of households had three mobile devices; 47.7% had two and 31.6% had one. Meanwhile, 4.9% of households lacked a mobile device.
Regarding information and communications technology (ICT) equipment in homes, the smartphone is consolidated as the most common device in Peruvian homes (92.8%), above the television (92.1%), once the leader in the sector.
In addition, a considerable and simultaneous increase was noted in the rates of family access to laptops and desktop computers. Thus, during 2023, 60.1% of families had laptops in their homes, a growth of 28.7 percentage points compared to 2019 (31.4%). For its part, access to desktop computers rose from 36.9% in 2019 to 50.6% at the end of 2023.
