Mobile money statistics and comparison of UK with US, Japan and more

I got this report from Monitise a month ago, but only just got around to writing about it.  It's stats about mobile money and, if anyone knows me well, they'll know that I like stats.  So here are some numbers:

• 1,008 million people use Facebook mobile every month
• 341 million people only use Facebook mobile
• 50 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store
• $10 billion is the income Apple generated from apps in 2013
• 500 million tweets are sent every day
• 540 million people use Google+ 
• $108 (UK) $96 (US) is how much Google makes out of every adult (15+) in 2013

Source: Facebook, Business Insider, Twitter, Google, Apple, UN

... and a few more …

• More than 50% of the US’ 5,800 commercial banks now offer some form of mobile banking [Source: ABA, December 2013]

• 82% of US18-25 year olds owned a smartphone in Q4 2013, and 61% of those engaged in mobile banking. That compares to around 60% and 30% respectively for their parents. [Source: Alix Partners, March 2014. With permission.]

• There are over seven billion SIM cards globally, enough for one per person on earth. Only 50% of the global population has a formal financial account.  [Source: World Bank, GSMA, 2014]

• Mobile-cellular penetration rates stand at 96% globally; 128% in developed countries; and 89% in developing countries. [Source:  ITU, February 2013]

• In 2013 smartphone sales surpassed feature phone sales globally for the first time. 1.8bn phones were sold, of which 968 million were smartphones.   [Source: Gartner, February 2014]

• On Christmas Day 2013, mobile made up 48% of all online retail traffic in the US, and mobile sales reached 30% of all online retail sales.  [Source: IBM, February 2014]

• 90% of US bankers surveyed expected at least a 10% decline in branch numbers over the next 5 years, with 45% expecting the decline to be 25% or more. Branch numbers have declined 9% in just the last 3 years. [Source: Celent, February 2014]

• 50% of smartphone users in the UK would like to do more mobile banking in the future. [Source: FICO, January 2014]

• There were 700m active smartphones and tablets in China at the end of 2013, more than double the 380m in Q1 2013 - 27% of those are high end ($500+). 55% of the top 1000 apps have links to the major Chinese social platforms. (WeChat, Tencent etc). Finance apps are up 109% in terms of active users. [Source: UMENG, March 2014]

• In the UK 12.4million banking apps have been downloaded, which are used on average 18.6million times per week. [Source: British Banker’s Association, March 2014]

• In June 2013 there were over 60million active mobile money accounts globally and 203million registered mobile money accounts.  [Source: GSMA, November 2013]

• 76% of banks see the key value of a mobile solution as competitive advantage – yet 68% of respondents to the same survey already have mobile banking technology and 21% are in the process of adopting it.  [Source: CEB TowerGroup, Mobile Banking Solutions Technology Analysis, December 2013]

Meanwhile, I would hve headlined this blog post as the UK Leads the Way in Mobile but, after yesterday's post about London leading the way in FinTech, I felt that might be a red rag to a bull.

Nevertheless, the UK Payments Council compares our experiences with mobile payments with Sweden, Kenya, India, Japan and the USA, and finds that we're the leaders:

• the UK’s Paym remains the only industry-wide free to use person-to-person mobile payments service globally;
• Japan and the United States – traditionally seen as world-leaders in payments technologies - lag behind their European counterparts, the UK and Sweden, in delivering person-to-person mobile payment solutions;
• India struggles to provide the universality of service provided in the UK and Sweden, due in most part to the demographic and geographic disparity of the country; and
• Kenya’s M-Pesa has increased financial capability and inclusion in a country lacking in a banking and payments infrastructure.