Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Number of Mobile-Only Internet User Soars


The number of mobile-only internet users is rising quickly, boosted by lower data prices for smartphone plans and an increasing disdain for the clunkiness of desktop devices, which offer none of the convenience of mobile.

A new forecast from eMarketer projects mobile-only users will hit 40.7 million this year. That’s up 27 percent from 2015, when there were only 32.1 million of them.

By 2021, there will be 52.3 million mobile-only users, representing nearly a fifth of all U.S. internet users.

And according to MediaPost, the number of desktop-only users is falling as mobile-only rises. This year, there will be 17.9 million. By 2021, that will fall to just 10.7 million.

Of course, a good number of people will continue to use both mobile and desktop. That’s in part owing to the fact that desktops remain the preferred format for work.

For several years now, more people have browsed the web using mobile devices than desktop. And the pricing of both smartphones and data plans has begun to fall.

And Gen Z strongly prefers mobile to desktop, having grown up with smartphones and using them to perform all manner of communications their parents did on desktop.

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