Basic phones remain important handsets in many countries, particularly among women, where 40 per cent go for them. While 40 per cent of women in Nigeria use basic mobile phones, the percentage of men using similar phones is 29. While these phones enable people to communicate via SMS/MMS or network calls and use mobile money via USSD, they are not mobile Internet-enabled.
 
GSMA, which revealed this, noted that in most surveyed countries, men and women are equally likely to own feature phones (including smart feature phones) that provide basic Internet services, but these devices are owned by a relatively small proportion of people, about five per cent.
  
In its ‘The Mobile Gender Gap Report 2025,’ GSMA observed that in Nigeria, 40 per cent of women use basic phones compared to 29 per cent of men. In terms of feature phones, nine per cent of women in the country are against 13 per cent of men, while 50 per cent of the male population in the country have smartphones, compared to 39 per cent.
  
The telecoms body said even among those who already own a handset, in most surveyed countries, only a relatively small proportion own feature phones compared to other types of handsets. The exceptions are Bangladesh, Rwanda and Uganda, where a significant proportion of mobile owners own a feature phone. It noted that 42 per cent of male and 32 per cent of female handset owners in Uganda own a feature phone, a higher proportion than either smartphones or basic phones.

GSMA said to understand which features of an Internet-enabled phone (feature phone or smartphone) men and women value most, apart from price, respondents, who already owned an Internet-enabled, reported they were likely to get one in the next two years, however important, they considered 13 different features for their next Internet-enabled phone.
 
Across surveyed countries, most respondents said the majority of the 13 features are important to them in an Internet-enabled phone, apart from price, indicating that a range of factors matter to them when choosing a new device.     
  
For example, in Nigeria, male and female respondents reported that eight of the 13 features, on average, were ‘very important’. However, some features stood out as being the most important across survey countries. These features were all related to the performance, functionality and longevity of the device.
  
According to GSMA, the most-reported features were long battery life, durability, fast Internet and processing speeds, large storage capacity and good camera quality.
 
This did not vary much by gender. For example, in Kenya, 74 per cent of male respondents and 77 per cent of female respondents reported that long battery life was a very important feature of an Internet-enabled phone. This also did not vary by urban or rural location, nor by whether someone already owned an Internet-enabled phone.
 
On gender gaps in diversity and frequency of mobile Internet use, GSMA said that in most survey countries, once people start using mobile Internet, most use it every day, regardless of gender. However, it said that in more than half of the survey countries (eight out of 15), there is still a gender gap in daily use among mobile Internet users, even when overall usage levels are high. For example, in Kenya, Senegal, Pakistan and the Philippines, despite relatively high daily mobile Internet use, female users are less likely than men to access it every day.

In Senegal, 76 per cent of women who use mobile Internet access it every day compared to 89 per cent of men. In Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, there is not only a gender gap in daily mobile internet use but also lower daily usage levels among both male and female mobile Internet users.

In the remaining seven surveyed countries (Egypt, Nigeria, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Guatemala and Mexico), women who use mobile Internet are equally likely as men to access it every day.