Revealed: How many VPNs were downloaded in the UAE in 2022?

Revealed: How many VPNs were downloaded in the UAE in 2022?

There has been a drop in adoption rate in the country

Published: Wed 7 Sep 2022, 9:59 AM

Virtual private network (VPN) penetration was the highest in the UAE globally during January-June 2022 at 25.72 per cent, surpassing Qatar.

According to Atlas VPN data shared exclusively with Khaleej Times, 2.543 million VPN applications were downloaded in the first half of this year, accounting for 43 per cent of last year’s total VPN downloads which totalled 5.88 million.

Atlas VPN ranked 85 countries in terms of VPN usage. The VPN penetration rate was calculated by summing up VPN downloads by country and dividing them by the country’s population. The VPN download data is extracted from Google Play Store and Apple App Store using the Sensor Tower service for data in 2020 and 2021. The data for H1 2022 was extracted using AppTweak.

The number of virtual private network downloads in the UAE has been decreasing, of late. In 2020, 6.09 million applications were downloaded which dropped to 5.88 million in 2021 and it’s expected that the full year’s number in 2022 will be less than last year’s figures.

The drop in adoption in the UAE rate is attributed to residents becoming more cautious about their privacy as