The latest stats from analysts at eMarketer (January 2014) confirm what everyone in the know has been saying for years: the mobile Web is massive.
eMarketer estimates that 73.4 percent of Internet users in 2013 accessed the Web from a mobile device. This is predicted to rise to 79.1 percent in 2014 and reach 90.1 percent in 2017. That doesn’t mean they will all exclusively use mobile to access the Web (though plenty will be mobile only), nor does it mean they’re all heavy users (eMarketer counts anyone who uses a mobile browser or app to access the Web at least once a month).
Mobile Web penetration (as a proportion of total Internet usage) is highest in Middle East and Africa (MEA) at a whopping 92.7 percent in 2013, forecast to reach to 94 percent this year. Asia-Pacific is also very high with 83.9 percent, rising to 87.4 percent this year. Western Europe and North America are lower (because PC Web penetration is considerably higher than in MEA or Asia) with 57.2 percent and 57.9 percent in 2013, rising to 67.8 percent and 64.3 percent in 2014.
The other way of looking at mobile Web penetration is to compare the total number of mobile phone users with those who use their handset to get on line. This will always give a much lower penetration than the previous measure, because there are many more mobile phone users in the world than Internet users (PC + mobile combined) and thus is, arguably, an even more remarkable number.
In 2013, 44.1 percent of mobile phone users will use the mobile Web at least once a month. In 2014, this will rise to 48.9 percent – that is almost half of mobile phone users – and will reach 57.8 percent in 2017.
Let’s put this into numbers rather than percentages: there are 6.84 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, according to the ITU (February 2013). That means there were 3 billion mobile Web users worldwide in 2013, and will be considerably more in 2014.
North America has the highest mobile Web penetration – as a percentage of total mobile users – at 57.6 percent in 2013 rising to 64.4 percent in 2014. This is a bit higher than MEA, with 51.0 percent and Western Europe, with 49.0 percent in 2013, growing to 54.4 and 58.3 percent in 2014. In 2017, eMarketer forecasts that North America will still lead in mobile Web penetration with 79.3 percent, with Western Europe close behind with 77.8 percent.
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