Compared to other countries, Canada ranked comparatively low in terms of mobile social media penetration – only 78 percent of internet users accessed social media via mobile in the first quarter of 2019, compared to 98 percent of online users in Indonesia who did the same. However, when ranking markets in the Americas based on active mobile social media penetration, Canada sits among the lower middle of the pack. Facebook is the leading mobile social media website in Canada, accounting for over half of mobile social media traffic. Mobile messaging apps consistently rank among the most downloaded social networking apps in the Apple App Store in Canada, with WhatsApp Messenger generating 148,596 downloads by Canadian iPhone users in June 2019.
Mobile gaming is also popular activity in Canada – the highest-grossing mobile gaming apps in the Google Play Store in Canada include Candy Crush Saga, Pokémon Go, and Fate/Grand Order. Mobile gaming revenue in Canada is projected to reach 480 million U.S. dollars in 2023, up from 377 million U.S. dollars in 2018. Women are more likely to be mobile gamers, with 53 percent of female internet users in Canada playing mobile games on a monthly basis.
As of March 2019, 46 percent of Canadian consumers were found to have used their mobile phone to make an online purchase. Overall, 45 percent of Canadian mobile payment users stated that they had used Apply Pay to pay for something in-store, in a restaurant or similar point of sale in the past 12 months, making Apple the most popular mobile payment brand in Canada.
