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Sunday, May 13, 2012

TechCauldron: Mobile share of web traffic in Asia has tripled since 2010

TechCauldron: Mobile share of web traffic in Asia has tripled since 2010:


Nearly 50% of web traffic in India is from the mobile ! Not surprising at all given the mobile phone penetartion vs PC, data capability of phones entry level upwards and aggressive push by whole ecosystem (handset manufacturers, operators, content providers) towards increasing data adoption. The mobile is enabling the first internet experience for many !


In just over two years, the share of web traffic in Asia that comes from mobile devices has almost tripled. In fact, in some countries, close to half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. India is very close to mobile traffic breaking 50% of all web traffic, as are several other countries in Asia as well as Africa.

The world is changing, and it’s changing fast

If you look at the top countries in the world ranked by number of mobile phones, there’s little surprise that China is the number one, followed by India, United States, Brazil, and Indonesia.
But if we look at the percentage of users that go online with a mobile device compared to with a computer, the list changes.
In late 2010, we investigated what part of all web usage across the world was mobile, and we’ve done so again with the latest figures available. This is what it looks like right now:
Mobile versus desktop web traffic
Comparing the figures from 2010 to the current ones reveals a dramatic increase in just over two years:
Mobile share of web traffic
20102012Increase 2010-2012
Africa5.81%14.85%155.59%
Asia6.1%17.84%192.46%
Europe1.81%5.13%183.43%
North America4.71%7.96%69.00%
Oceania2.88%7.55%162.15%
South America1.46%2.86%95.89%
Worldwide3.81%10.01%162.73%
We should point out that these numbers are percentages out of the total of web traffic and do not reflect any change in the absolute number of people or devices.
But by all accounts, mobile web traffic counted in absolute numbers is virtually exploding in the next few years.

Countries with largest mobile share of web traffic

When we dig a little deeper into this information, we find that, in several countries, mobile web traffic is close to overtaking web traffic from computers.  Over at The Next Web, Jon Russell recently predicted that mobile web traffic in India will overtake PC web traffic this year, which seems pretty likely to happen.
Right now, the countries with the highest share of mobile traffic as part of total web traffic are:
  • 48.87% – India
  • 47.09% – Zambia
  • 44.95% – Sudan
  • 42.36% – Uzbekistan
  • 40.65% – Nigeria
  • 37.95% – Zimbabwe
  • 35.46% – Laos
  • 34.66% – Brunei
  • 31.79% – Ethiopia
  • 29.2% – Kenya
As you can see, Africa and Asia split the list between them. Africa amassed six countries, which left Asia with four.
The first European country is the United Kingdom with 10.71%, and the U.S. showed 8.61% mobile web traffic as share of all web traffic.
It’s worth noting that Europe scored a 183.43% increase in mobile browsing share over this period, not that far behind Asia. But with the mobile share only increasing from 1.81% to 5.13%, Europe is still far behind both Africa and Asia when it comes to the percentage of users accessing the web using mobiles.

The trend is set to continue

Worldwide, mobiles only account for about 10% of web access, but it’s a figure that is growing fast. With some countries already closing in on 50% of web traffic coming from mobiles – with India in the lead – it’s safe to assume this development will only continue.
Clearly, people are taking to their mobile devices all over the world to get on the Internet, but more so in Africa and Asia than elsewhere.
This is a very interesting development to follow, and we’re sure to report on it in future articles.
Note about the data: We used data from StatCounter as the basis for our analysis. The data for 2012 covers the first seven days of May, 2012.

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