 "For mobile, Asia and Africa are bigger than US. Check out this graphic")
If you thought mobile is big in America, here’s a surprise for you. In Asia and Africa, people use internet through their mobile phones much more than most other countries.
A slideshow by technology analyst Mary Meeker highlights several trends and also ’re-imagination’ of the Internet.She has released the annual Internet Trends report at the Code conference, California.
Among some startling revelations like dating app Tinder users swipe 800 million times each day, the report also points out how the Internet user growth has slowed down below 10 percent. It is still strong, but slowing, adds the report.The mobile data traffic is growing at the rate of 81 percent year-over-year, which includes about 22 percent video content.
[caption id=“attachment_86310” align=“aligncenter” width=“600”]
Data from KPCB Internet trend.[/caption]
The graph shows that in Africa 38 percent of internet users access the web through their mobile. In Asia, the number stands at 37 percent. Clearly, mobiles have seeped in Asia and Africa over the last one year as these figures are double than what it was in FY13.
What is surprising is developed countries are still not using mobile internet as often. In Europe, mobile usage is about 16 percent, while in South America and North America it is 17 and 19 percent, respectively.
Globally, mobile usage has been increasing rapidly and is at 25 percent as compared to web usage.
A report in The Atlantic notes that there are a lot of countries that simply skipped the laptop generation and went straight to Internet-connected phones. Countries in Africa and Asia may have followed that trend. The report also points out that the high mobile internet usage is one of the reason why some African countries aremuch further ahead of the US in mobile payments.
So, why are Africa and Asia leading in the mobile race? A Pingdom article notes that the reason these regions have such high mobile web usage compared with desktop usage is because a large portion of the population doesn’t have access to computers and Internet access. With smartphones becoming cheaper and mobile internet more accessible, more people are choosing mobile over the desktop.