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October 29, 2012

Americans Increasingly Relying on Mobile Devices to Access Internet

While as a nation we’re still as addicted to the Internet as ever, the way we’re accessing it is changing.

Increasingly, we’re taking our browsing on the road (or at least into the bathroom) and leaving the PCs behind. This is according to the latest release of International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Worldwide New Media Market Model. By 2015, more Americans will access the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs.

In fact, the U.S. leads the trend, and the number of people accessing the Internet through PCs will shrink from 240 million consumers in 2012 to 225 million in 2016. At the same time, the number of mobile users will increase from 174 million to 265 million. IDC finds that Western Europe and Japan are only about two years behind on this trend.

"In the consumer world, mobile Internet usage is already beginning to displace PC usage, and the United States is leading this trend," said Karsten Weide, program vice president of Media & Entertainment at IDC, in a statement about the release of the report. "There has been much talk about how the future of the Internet will be mobile first and PC second. In the United States, that future is now."

The New Media Market Model also expects online PC activities to be affected as consumers take their usage mobile. IDC predicts that the share of users accessing social networks such as Facebook on their PCs will decline from 66 percent in 2012 to 52 percent in 2016.

Worldwide mobile advertising may almost quintuple from $6 billion in 2011 to $28.8 billion in 2016 as well.

Worldwide business-to-consumer (B2C) m-commerce spending will grow sixfold between 2011 and 2016, reaching $223 billion at the end of the forecast period.




Edited by Braden Becker


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