Continuing our series of posts around mobiles, we now consider the report which suggests that mobiles have exceeded desktops as the single source of access to the internet. The research was published by ComScore (see: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/Number-of-Mobile-Only-Internet-Users-Now-Exceeds-Desktop-Only-in-the-U.S)
It is important to note the following:
1) This report applies to the USA only.
2) The research only looks at sole use. In other words do people use mobile phones OR desktop to access the internet only. People who ‘mix and match’ their usage across both mediums are not counted for this purpose.
3) It does not mean that the desktop as we know it is in decline.
From SEO purposes, there are a couple of things that are interesting about this:
* We can make an assumption that ‘big change’ comes out of America and this is where all the mobile friendly search concept was developed. The causal link between the two is fascinating since it appears that Google seems to be well aware of peoples changing attitudes and behaviour.
* Further research has shown that when it comes to online tasks such as shopping, banking etc, many people actually prefer to use a desktop to do this rather than a mobile. With this in mind there should not be an automatic jump to ensuring the importance of mobile friendly search against negating desktop search. Businesses need to ensure that both their mobile and desktop searching platforms are properly optimised and friendly to make the most of any opportunities that come their way.
The main point to take from this is that whilst lately there is a move towards a ‘mobile friendly searching revolution,’ led n part due to the increase of mobile consumption, the ‘traditional’, desktop search should still be catered for and so development is needed on both, this could increase development costs for new web builds and is a consideration now that needs to be taken into account for startups and developing businesses.
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