Mobile now accounts for 13% of internet traffic, up from 4% in 2010, and now makes up a majority of traffic in some emerging markets, according to new research looking into mobile internet access. The internet trends report from Kleiner Perkins venture capitalist Mary Meeker showed that mobile internet access was booming in emerging markets such as India where consumers who have never owned PCs are buying smartphones.
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Mobile apps are expected to account for 67% of the $19bn generated by the sector this year, against 33% for ads.
Meeker presented her report to Stanford University students this week.
Mobile trends and the continued proliferation of smartphones around the world get, as usual, a lot of play here.
While Apple’s iPad has surpassed adoption of even the iPod and iPhone — iPad growth is 3 times that of the iPhone and “leaves siblings in dust,” Meeker says Android-based phones were embraced at six times the rate of the iPhone.
Other interesting points:
• Smartphone growth ahead. The number of smartphone subscribers grew 42 percent to 1.1 billion in 2012 but, as of the fourth quarter, they still only represent 17 percent of mobile subscribers worldwide.
• iPad. The iPad uptake has been greater than the iPod and iPhone, with 48 percent of U.S. kids (aged 6 to 12) saying they want an iPad for the holidays. An iPad mini was the third-most requested item, at 36 percent. Nintendo’s Wii came in second on their holiday wish list, with 39 percent of kids saying they want that. Of note, at the bottom of the list was Apple TV, which was requested by 4 percent of kids
• Tablets and e-readers. Twenty-nine percent of U.S. adults own a tablet or e-reader, up from less than 2 percent three years ago.
• Global mobile traffic. Mobile traffic represented 13 percent of all Internet traffic this year, up from 4 percent in 2010 and 1 percent in 2009.
• Black Friday shopping. Consumers on mobile devices and tablets did 24 percent of the online shopping on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, versus 6 percent two years ago. And most did that shopping on an Apple device.
• Microsoft Windows and PCs. With smartphones and tablets outselling PCs in 2012, it’s probably no surprise that Apple’s iOS operating system and Google’s Android OS had a 45 percent marketshare of computing operating systems. Microsoft’s Windows held 35 percent.
Meeker says the installed base of smartphones and tablets should surpass the installed base of PCs in the second quarter of 2013.
Read the full 88-slide deck here