Three months have passed since the previous quarterly Global Digital Statshot report from Hootsuite and We Are Social, keeping us up-to-date on where we stand with global usage habits.
The Q4 2018 outlook was just recently published, and the only winners from the Middle East are Qatar and the UAE when it comes to mobile broadband. Though it may be a setback compared to the Q3 Digital Statshot when Qatar came out on top for mobile, it’s not a major concern cause you may not even notice the effects.
Since the average person in the Middle East likely has more than one mobile device, the region has taken a much bigger lead in pushing their infrastructure to focus on mobile first.
Qatar takes 2nd and UAE takes 3rd spot
Ookla did their recent speed tests in August for many of the countries. This time, Norway beat out Qatar by just 0.13Mbps in the test. It may be a small loss but Qatar is still ahead of the UAE by more than 6.5Mbps when it comes to ‘Fastest Average Mobile Internet Connection speeds’.
Both countries have been making big strides to roll-out 5G support, even though there is still a lack of consumer-ready electronics readily available for use. Likely the main reason why they are still in the Top 10 of the recent report, and we haven’t seen some of the other countries making efforts to improve mobile broadband speeds for their users.
When it comes to the fixed broadband ranking, there isn’t any country from the Middle East that made it to the Top 10. The rankings are dominated by countries stretching from USA to Europe and Asia.
There’s plenty of other interesting tidbits and quantifiable trends that you can see from the October 2018 Global Digital Statshot report embedded below.
Until next quarterly Global Digital Statshot to see where the Middle East stands.
Image Credit (header and body images): Q4 Global Digital Statshot on Slideshare
