Swanson Russell

The World Wide Web, and everything involved with it, has continuously evolved since its creation. And it continues to do so at an increasing pace. The current change is how we are moving from accessing the Web from our home or work desktop computers or laptops, to accessing the Web from anywhere, at anytime, on our smartphones. Now, accessing the Web via a mobile device can really be done by both smartphones and Web-enabled feature phones, but for the purpose of this article, I am going to discuss the idea of accessing the mobile Web via smartphones (iPhones, Android powered phones, certain Blackberry devices and the new Windows powered phones).

Numbers to Consider

It's easy to say “just jump into mobile,” but it is important to understand the state of the mobile Web. So let's look at some numbers.

According to a Pew Internet study posted July 2010, 38% of all adults access the Web via a mobile browser. Now you look at that number and may not be overly impressed, but one thing to consider is this number also includes Internet-capable feature phones. I would expect mobile Web access on smartphones to be much higher.
If we were to look at this number by age group, it breaks down as such.

Percent of cell phone owners who use their phones to access the web by age group

Another number I like to look at is the frequency at which these people access the mobile Web, and the change that occurred between the middle of 2009 and the middle of 2010. I like to lump the "several times a day" group and the "about once a day" group together, and as you can see, there has been a huge jump from 36% to 55%.

Frequency of mobile internet users (% of mobile internet users)

While looking at these numbers is all good and well, something else to keep in mind is how access to the mobile Web is expected to grow.

“More Americans are expected to own a smartphone than a feature phone by the end of 2011.”

“Mobile Web usage is expected to eclipse desktop Web usage by the middle of 2013.”

In future posts, I will discuss the three distinct kinds of mobile websites as well as mobile websites versus mobile applications.  In the meantime, I want to leave you with one last tidbit that I think summarizes why you should pay attention to the mobile Web.