I get this question a lot. Someone reads about the Holafly Global eSIM Index, glances at the ranking, and sends me a message: “Chris, my country isn’t there. Where would we be?” The Index covers 50 markets, and there are almost 200 countries in the world, so statistically most people asking me this are out of luck. But after spending weeks looking at the data, discussing it with operators around the world, and observing eSIM adoption on the ground in many of these markets, I’ve realized something. You don’t actually need the exact number to understand where your country sits. You just need to know how to read the landscape.
So let me try something. Instead of walking you through a methodology, let me share what I’ve learned about how eSIM behaves in different types of markets, and by the end you should be able to place your own country with reasonable confidence.
The first thing that surprised me was that geography and wealth are weaker predictors than most people assume. You’d expect eSIM adoption to follow GDP, with rich countries first and emerging markets later, but the Index doesn’t quite work that way. The United States and Estonia are at the top for very different reasons, the US because iPhones there simply have no SIM tray anymore, Estonia because they built one of the most advanced digital identity ecosystems in the world and eSIM slots naturally into that framework. Meanwhile, some markets you’d expect to lead, like Japan, Germany, or Sweden, sit lower than you’d think. And it’s not because their infrastructure is behind. It’s because their consumers hold onto phones longer, and older devices don’t support eSIM. It’s that simple.
So when I try to estimate where a country I’m curious about would land, I don’t start with GDP. I start with a more useful question: how frictionless is the connectivity experience for someone entering the market for the first time? That single dimension, more than any other, tells you where a country sits.
At the top of the Index you find the markets where activation genuinely works. You open an app, scan a QR code, and you’re connected in under a minute. Identity verification is handled remotely, digital channels are the default, and physical distribution has become residual. If your country operates this way, you’re probably somewhere between 78 and 90 points, alongside the US, Canada, the UK, Estonia, Switzerland, and most of northern Europe. The details differ, the US leads on device penetration, Estonia on digital identity, Finland on operator execution, but the outcome for the end user is essentially the same.
Just below them are the markets that interest me most, the ones where everything seems to be in place but activation is still fussier than it should be. Spain is a clear example. The country has three strong operators, high smartphone penetration, and a digitally mature population. Yet activation always seems to require one more identity step than expected. The same pattern shows up in Italy, France, Brazil, and Chile. If your country has eSIM broadly available but there’s consistent friction in the last step of the journey, such as a verification requirement, an unstable app flow, a process that clearly wasn’t designed for eSIM in the first place, you’re probably in the 65 to 78 range. This is the largest cluster in the Index, and honestly, it’s where most of the markets people ask me about actually live.
Then there’s a different type of market, where eSIM technically exists but adoption is structurally conditioned by local market dynamics. Perhaps 20 percent of the installed device base is eSIM-compatible. In scenarios where a single operator holds a highly dominant market share, the commercial incentive to aggressively accelerate a technology that naturally lowers switching costs is balanced against broader market retention goals. Additionally, the local regulatory framework might still be heavily anchored around physical SIM architecture. Mexico serves as an interesting case study here. It is a massive market with highly competent operators, but because device renewal cycles are naturally slower and the ecosystem is balancing these transition dynamics, the country sits at #43 despite having the structural ingredients to rank considerably higher. If your country fits this description, you’re likely between 50 and 65 points.
And then there are the markets where specific regulatory policy frameworks shape a highly centralized ecosystem. This includes countries like Turkey, India, the UAE, and Oman. While each regulator acts under different regional motivations, the structural outcome regarding international digital onboarding is similar. Due to local security and verification compliance standards, international travel eSIM providers navigate strict operational frameworks when operating locally. In our index analysis, this focused regulatory approach naturally impacts digital activation scores. Consequently, a market that features outstanding premium infrastructure and advanced underlying technology might sit lower in the overall index ranking purely due to these strict local compliance requirements rather than any infrastructure or technology gap. If your country has implemented this kind of framework, you almost certainly already know.
To make this more concrete, let me walk through an example of a country that isn’t in the Index. Take Portugal. It isn’t among the 50 markets we analyzed, but it’s a good case because it’s neither obvious nor extreme, which is the situation most readers will find themselves in. Applying the same lens I’ve just described, Portugal has three well-established operators actively promoting eSIM, a national digital identity system through Chave Móvel Digital that works well in practice, and a very open ecosystem for global connectivity. Device penetration is solid but probably not at Nordic levels, and activation flows tend to work smoothly but occasionally require an identity verification step that adds friction. This places Portugal squarely in the second cluster I described earlier, the countries where everything is in place but adoption is not quite as frictionless as in the leaders. My best estimate would put it somewhere around 75 to 78 points, which would locate it between Spain, which scores 78.5, and France, which scores 75.6. That range aligns with what anyone familiar with the Portuguese market would expect intuitively, which is exactly the point. The exercise isn’t about producing a precise number. It’s about arriving at a defensible range that reflects reality.
So if you’re trying to place your own country on this map, the exercise I’d recommend is this. Think about how a professional visiting your country for the first time typically experiences connectivity. If activation is remote, digital, and takes under a minute, you’re probably in the top twenty. If it works but involves some friction, such as a verification requirement, an app step, a moderate delay, you’re likely in the middle. If most visitors end up at a physical store, you’re in the lower half. It isn’t a precise measurement, but after weeks immersed in this data, I’ve found that this intuition maps very closely to where markets actually land.
The real value of the Index, at least from where I sit, is not the ranking itself. It’s what happens once you can locate your own market on this landscape. You start asking sharper questions. Why is the activation flow more complex than in comparable markets? What is holding adoption back, device penetration, regulation, operator strategy, or something else? What would need to change for the country to move up? Those are the questions this Index was built to surface. And if you’ve read this far and can now roughly place your country on the map, you’re already asking them.
