Mobile photography is shaped by two connected forces: what people do with smartphone cameras and the infrastructure that makes those workflows possible. In the UK, 69% of smartphone users took photos or videos weekly in 2016, while global mobile-phone ownership reached four in five people aged 10 or older in 2024. More recent figures show the scale of storage, search and editing services built around mobile images.
Contents
- How often people take and edit photos
- The global audience for mobile photography
- Subscriptions and data traffic
- Network coverage and geographic access
- Storage, search, sharing and editing at scale
- Growth forecasts and mobile sharing
How often people take and edit photos
The clearest direct usage measures in this dataset come from Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes – Report 2017. They describe a UK survey conducted in 2016 among 1,249 adults aged 16 and over who used a smartphone. These are survey results from that period, rather than current global estimates.
Ofcom found that 97% of UK smartphone users had ever used their phone to take photos or videos. Weekly activity was also common: 69% took photos or videos on their phone at least weekly. Editing was less frequent but still widespread. Seventy-two percent had ever edited photos or videos on their smartphone, and 37% did so at least weekly. Ofcom, Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes – Report 2017
The age split shows a strong difference in weekly activity. Weekly smartphone photo or video capture was reported by 82% of UK users aged 16–24 and 83% of those aged 25–34, compared with 44% of users aged 65 or over. Weekly editing showed a similar pattern: 54% of users aged 16–24 edited photos or videos on a smartphone weekly, while the corresponding figure for people aged 65 or over was 17%. These figures describe reported behavior, not the number of images each person created or edited.
Ofcom also reported a gender difference in weekly capture. In 2016, 72% of women who used a smartphone took photos or videos weekly, compared with 65% of men. The result is specific to the UK survey and its measurement period.
| UK smartphone activity measured by Ofcom | Overall | Younger or older comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Ever took photos or videos, 2016 | 97% | — |
| Took photos or videos weekly, 2016 | 69% | 82% of ages 16–24; 44% of ages 65+ |
| Ever edited photos or videos, 2016 | 72% | — |
| Edited photos or videos weekly, 2016 | 37% | 54% of ages 16–24; 17% of ages 65+ |
The global audience for mobile photography
The potential audience for mobile photography is much larger than the population represented by any single national survey. The ITU reported that four in five people aged 10 or older owned a mobile phone globally in 2024. Ownership exceeded 95% among people aged 10 or older in high-income economies, but was 56% in low-income economies. ITU, Facts and figures 2024 – Mobile phone ownership
Ownership and internet use do not always move together. In Africa, 66% of people owned a mobile phone in 2024, while 38% used the internet. In the Arab States, mobile-phone ownership exceeded internet use by 14 percentage points; in the Asia-Pacific region, the gap was 11 percentage points. A phone may therefore be part of someone’s photography workflow even when internet access is less consistent or absent at the time a photo is taken.
There was also a measurable global gender gap. Mobile-phone ownership reached 77% among females aged 10 or older and 82% among males in 2024. The ITU reported a global gender-parity score of 0.93 and said women were about 7% less likely than men to own a mobile phone. Among people who did not own mobile phones, women outnumbered men by 31%. These figures are about ownership; they do not measure camera use, editing frequency or image-sharing behavior. ITU, Facts and figures 2024 – Mobile phone ownership
Subscriptions and data traffic
Mobile subscriptions provide a wider view of the connectivity layer behind photo backup, cloud editing and sharing. In 2024, there were 112 mobile-cellular subscriptions per 100 inhabitants worldwide and 95 mobile-broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants. The world had 9.1 billion mobile-cellular subscriptions. Because subscription counts can exceed 100 per 100 inhabitants, they should not be read as the percentage of people who own or actively use a phone.
The pace of growth was faster for mobile broadband than for mobile-cellular subscriptions. Over the five years to 2024, worldwide mobile-broadband subscriptions grew at an average annual rate of 5%, while mobile-cellular subscriptions grew at an average annual rate of 1.1%. ITU, Facts and Figures 2024 – Subscriptions
Regional and income-group differences remained substantial. High-income economies had about 138 mobile-cellular subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in 2024. Low-income economies had 71 per 100, while the CIS region had 147 per 100 and Africa had 98 per 100. These figures describe subscription density, not the quantity of photographs produced or the quality of a photographer’s connection.
The ITU reported global mobile-broadband traffic of 1 zettabyte at the end of 2023 and estimated close to 1.3 zettabytes in 2024. The 2024 figure is an estimate, and the traffic measure covers all open-Internet traffic rather than photo-only traffic. It therefore indicates the scale of the mobile data environment supporting many activities, including image uploads, downloads and cloud synchronization, without isolating photography. ITU, Facts and Figures 2024 – Internet traffic
Network coverage and geographic access
Coverage determines whether a mobile photographer can upload, share or retrieve images away from fixed broadband. In 2024, 5G covered 51% of the world population. Coverage was 84% in high-income countries but 4% in low-income countries, a difference that matters when workflows depend on fast uploads or cloud-based editing. ITU, Facts and Figures 2024 – Mobile network coverage
Europe had the highest regional 5G population coverage at 72%, followed by the Americas at 63% and Asia-Pacific at 62%. Coverage was 13% in the Arab States and 11% in Africa. These are population-coverage figures, so they indicate network availability rather than actual adoption, subscription status or the reliability of service at a particular location.
Older network generations still provide much broader access. 4G covered 92% of the world population in 2024, although coverage in low-income countries was 52%. 3G or better covered 96% globally. In Africa, 14% of the population lacked access to a mobile-broadband network. Urban and rural access also diverged: globally, 67% of urban residents had 5G access compared with 29% of rural residents.
For mobile photography, the distinction between taking a picture and completing a connected workflow is important. A camera can capture an image offline, while backup, search, collaboration and social sharing depend on a suitable connection. The ITU coverage statistics measure availability, not whether people actually use the network for those purposes. ITU, Facts and Figures 2024 – Mobile network coverage
Storage, search, sharing and editing at scale
Google’s product metrics show how large photo services have become, although they are company-reported figures and include photos and videos where stated. In 2025, more than 1.5 billion people used Google Photos each month. The service stored more than 9 trillion photos and videos, while more than 370 million people searched their photos each month, more than 440 million shared memories, and more than 210 million edited their photos. Google, Google Photos celebrates 10 years with 10 tips
Upload volume was also reported at an extraordinary scale. Google said Google Photos received more than 6 billion photo and video uploads per day in 2024. This metric covers both photos and videos and should not be treated as a count of unique people or unique photographic moments. Google, Google I/O 2024: An I/O for a new generation
Earlier Google figures help show the service’s historical expansion, but they retain their original dates and should not be read as current measurements. Google reported more than 4 trillion photos stored in 2020 and 28 billion new photos and videos uploaded per week that year. In 2017, it reported more than 500 million monthly users and more than 1.2 billion photos and videos backed up per day. Google, Updating Google Photos’ storage policy to build for the future
The historical figures are not independently reverified here. They are useful for context because they show that mobile photography is not only a capture activity; it also creates a continuing need for storage, organization, retrieval and editing. The 2025 Google Photos metrics similarly separate different behaviors: monthly use, search, sharing and editing are not interchangeable measures.
Growth forecasts and mobile sharing
Deloitte Global forecast that more than 2.5 trillion photographs would be shared and stored in 2016, with more than 90% of those photographs expected to be taken on mobile phones. This was a forecast for 2016, not a later observed total, and it should remain labeled as such. Adobe, Enabling Creativity with Mobile Photography
The same Adobe page cited a 2015 survey in which 67% of respondents said they used their phone to share pictures, videos or commentary about events in their community. In that survey, 46% said they could not live without their phones. These results are older survey findings and do not establish present-day global behavior.
Taken together, the figures describe a layered mobile photography ecosystem. Direct UK measures show frequent capture and meaningful weekly editing, especially among younger smartphone users. ITU data show a large but uneven ownership and connectivity base, with major differences by income group, region, gender and urban-rural location. Google’s later product metrics show how storage, search, sharing and editing operate at billions-of-files scale, while the Deloitte figure illustrates how early forecasts recognized the shift toward mobile-created images.