Internet browsing and other Internet related activities are rising on mobile. We know this as a hearsay. We see more and more people accessing various services and more service providers making themselves mobile friendly. Is that the trend? Now we have data to prove that it is more than a trend or a signal. It is a fact.

Mobile is trumping as a major access device for the Internet and it is eating into desktop.

In the period of June 2009 to June 2010 the share of mobile browsing was 7.17%. It has gone up to 20.13% in the year July 2010 to June 2009. During the same period desktop browsing has come down too. This is not the case of increase in the overall pie, which obviously is true. It is the case of a market share shift. Data is derived from StatCounter charts.

Mobile vs Desktop (June 2009 – June 2010)

Mobile vs Desktop (July 2010 – June 2011)

StatCounter’s data doesn’t cover the cases of people who use both mobile and desktop to access the Internet. It also doesn’t show exclusive mobile users and exclusive desktop users. Though good to have, that kind of segmentation is hard to get. Surveys, we all know, won’t help in this matter.

Above data also doesn’t differentiate between what makes of mobile and what makes of desktop. Mobiles should include, feature phones, smartphone and tablets. Categorizing Netbooks and laptops as either desktops or mobile is debatable. It would be interesting to know how these are categorized. If the internet access is via a laptop using a Reliance Netconnect or MTS Blaze, would it fall into mobile category?

Even if we take all these unknowns, growth of mobile Internet to capture 20% share in just one year is impressive. Now we know why the world is gung ho on mobile, smartphones and tablets. Now it makes even more sense about why Smartphone shipments will cross PC shipments in 2011.

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