Pakistan’s Smartphone Usage Hits 71.6 Percent as Digital Adoption Accelerates, Economic Survey Shows

Numbers on a page can tell two stories at once. Pakistan’s latest Economic Survey data tells one that the government is keen to highlight a country steadily digitising, with more smartphone users, more broadband subscribers, more locally made devices, and some of the cheapest internet data prices anywhere in the world.

But behind those headline figures sits a different reality, one where 28 percent of mobile users are still on 2G networks, internet outages from load shedding and diesel theft are disrupting connectivity daily, and the gap between urban digital access and rural digital exclusion remains wide.

Both stories are true. And understanding Pakistan’s digital trajectory requires holding them together.

Smartphone Adoption Crosses 71 Percent

Pakistan’s smartphone usage rate has reached 71.6 percent, according to Economic Survey data, a 0.6 percentage point increase from the previous year. While the increment appears modest, at Pakistan’s population scale it translates into millions of additional users shifting from basic handsets to internet-capable smartphones.

The total number of mobile and fixed phone subscribers in the country has reached 207.22 million, a figure that puts Pakistan among the largest telecom markets in Asia by absolute subscriber count.

Mobile connection penetration has risen further, reaching 82.6 percent of the population, up from 81 percent recorded in the previous year’s survey. The direction of travel is consistent and sustained.

Broadband and Data Consumption Surge

Pakistan’s broadband subscriber base has crossed 161 million, a number that would have seemed ambitious just five years ago. Total internet data consumption across the country is estimated to have reached 30,783 petabytes, reflecting not just more users but deeper, heavier usage per subscriber as video streaming, mobile payments, and app-based services become embedded in daily life.

Pakistan also ranks among the countries offering the cheapest internet data in the world, a distinction that has driven adoption among lower-income segments who might otherwise have remained offline. Affordable data has been one of the genuine structural enablers of Pakistan’s digital growth story, even as network quality and reliability remain contested.

Local Manufacturing: 161 Million Devices and Counting

One of the most significant figures in the Economic Survey data concerns local manufacturing. By March 2026, Pakistan had locally produced 161.6 million mobile phones, a number that reflects the rapid expansion of domestic assembly and manufacturing capacity since the government introduced policies to incentivise local production over the past several years.

This shift has reduced import dependence for handsets, created employment in the manufacturing sector, and contributed to making devices more price-accessible for Pakistani consumers. The local manufacturing ecosystem, while still maturing, has established itself as a meaningful part of the country’s broader industrial and digital policy.

The 2G Problem Has Not Gone Away

For all the progress the numbers represent, one figure demands serious attention: 28 percent of Pakistan’s mobile users remain on 2G networks.

In practical terms, 2G means voice calls and basic SMS, not mobile internet, not apps, not digital payments, not access to government services being migrated online. In a country where Digital Pakistan has been an official policy framework for years, more than a quarter of the mobile user base is operating on technology that the rest of the world began phasing out over a decade ago.

The reduction in 2G users is progress. But 28 percent is not a rounding error; it is tens of millions of people effectively excluded from the digital economy that the government’s own statistics are celebrating.

The geographic concentration of 2G users in rural and underserved areas also means the digital divide is not just about technology; it maps directly onto existing inequalities of income, infrastructure, and access.

What the Survey Does Not Capture

Economic Survey figures measure what is connected, not how well. Pakistan’s 161 million broadband subscribers include millions who experience intermittent, slow, or unreliable internet, particularly in areas where telecom towers are struggling with diesel shortages and extended load shedding.

A subscriber counted in the broadband statistics may be someone whose connection drops for eight hours a day when their local tower’s generator runs out of fuel. They are digitally present on paper. They are digitally excluded in practice.

The Senate IT subcommittee heard just this week that over 9,200 diesel theft incidents at telecom towers occurred in eleven months and that 12-hour load shedding is making network operations unsustainable for mobile operators. Those are the conditions in which Pakistan’s 161 million broadband users are actually trying to stay connected.

Digital Pakistan: Real Progress, Real Gaps

The Economic Survey data confirms that Pakistan’s digital adoption trajectory is real and sustained. Smartphone penetration is rising. Broadband subscriber numbers are large by regional standards. Local manufacturing has scaled significantly. Data consumption is growing at a pace that signals genuine behavioural change.

These are not invented statistics. The direction they point, toward a more digitally connected Pakistan, reflects investment, policy effort, and consumer demand that has proven resilient even through economic turbulence.

But Digital Pakistan as a vision will remain incomplete as long as 28 percent of users are on 2G, as long as towers go dark because diesel has been stolen or load shedding has run beyond what batteries can absorb, and as long as the connectivity being counted in subscriber figures does not translate into reliable, consistent access for the people it is supposed to serve.

The numbers are moving in the right direction. The infrastructure holding them up is still under serious strain. Both things are true, and any honest reading of Pakistan’s digital progress must account for both.