Although smartphones and tablets were introduced only about three years ago, they are already making up nearly 1/10th of the global web traffic. That was discovered by a study conducted by Adobe. According to the research, however, tablets are now leading smartphones in this race.
The report was introduced at the 2013 Adobe Summit. It was based over 100 billion visits to more than 1,000 website on a global level. One curious fact that the study revealed was that tablet computers are used more for web browsing than smartphones. The report states that worldwide traffic generated by smart mobile phones is equal to 7%. In comparison, tablets reach 8%.
The primary analyst of Adobe’s research, Tyler White, shared that both these figures are really “impressive” for electronic devices that were launched three years ago. White is even more impressed by the rise of the tablets. He informed that Adobe has been closely tracking the progress of this device. The analyst also reveals that a year ago tablet traffic was more than 50% bigger than that of smartphones. Moreover, Adobe has found that during the 2012 holiday season, over 13% of the online sales were done through tablet PCs. In addition, the research has discovered that tablets are preferred devices during sports events like the Super Bowl in the US, for example. That means that tablets are playing a key role not only in social networking and online shopping, but in web browsing in general.
Although smart mobile phones continue to enjoy better sales than tablets, consumers use them less for browsing. Tablets, on the other hand, were found to be more suitable and comfortable for various online activities like shopping, video watching, social networking and surfing. In fact, the study claims that tablet owners visit 70% more webpages than people who use smartphones for internet browsing.
Another interesting fact found by the study is that tablets are used primarily for online shopping. As a matter of fact, the e-commerce industry is enjoying the biggest attention from tablet owners compared to any other sector at the moment. Extremely popular activities among tablet users is said to be travel and car online shopping. Smartphones, on the contrary, are used more for checking and paying phone bills.
Adobe’s research also says that the overall use of tablets in the world has increased with about 50%. That was especially the case in the UK. There, tablet surfing made up 12.2% of the whole traffic. In contrast, in the US that number was equal to a little over 9%.
There are also some exceptions in the tablet trend. The majority of consumers in Asian countries like China and Japan still prefer to rely on their smartphones for web browsing. That could be explained by the fact that smart mobile phones in these countries appeared earlier. In addition, the price of tablets there is still higher than that of smartphones.
