Actually, this should not be a surprise to anyone who keeps their eye on the tech industry. Devices have been getting smaller and mobile for some time now.
More casual computer users have shifted from owning a desktop and now do their computing and browsing on some form of a tablet such as the Amazon Fire, Apples iPad or one of the numerous Android options that are available.
Although Microsoft’s Surface may also be impacting this shift it is the new smaller and inexpensive form factor Windows devices, such as those we saw at IFA 2014 that measure under 8 inches, that are likely to make a significant impact on this trend as well.
According to StatCounter mobile Internet use increased 67% from August 2013 (17.1%) to August 2014 (28.5%). They also noted that tablet use during the same period increased from 4.8% to 6.8% while desktop usage, still the most popular option, decreased from 77.98% to 64.58%.
If those numbers hold fairly steady over the next two years, which I suspect they will not because mobile adoption is accelerating, then mobile browsing will take over desktop browsing sometime in mid to late 2016.
StatCounter Global Browsing Stats from August 2013 to August 2014
Some other interesting usage stats from this same time period:
Operating Systems
- Windows XP
- 17.06% to 9.23% (- 7.83)
- Windows Vista
- 4.32% to 2.15% (- 2.17)
- Windows 7
- 43.11% to 35.95% (- 7.16)
- Windows 8
- 5.84% to 4.74% (- 1.1)
- Windows 8.1
- .02% to 5.3% (+ 5.28)
- Mac OS X
- 5.95% to 5.59% (- 0.36)
- Android
- 8.17% to 17.34% (+ 9.17)
- iOS
- 7.57% to 11.61% (+ 4.04)
Browsers
- Chrome
- 36.19% to 39.53% (+ 3.34)
- IE
- 21.18% to 14.52% (- 6.66)
- Firefox
- 16.02% to 12.63% (- 3.39)
- Safari
- 7.11% to 7.73% (+ 0.62)
- Android
- 5.68% to 7.36% (+ 1.68)
- iPhone
- 3.65% to 6.21% (+ 2.56)
- Opera
- 3.72% to 4.23% (+ 0.51)
You can definitely see the mobile shift in these numbers as well.
The entire report is available over at the StatCounter website.
