In some ways, the mobile Internet remains distinct from uses of the Internet from personal computers. In other important ways, there now is not such a compelling reason to differentiate “mobile” from “fixed” access to the Internet, or use of its enabled applications.
“For as long as the idea of the 'mobile internet' has been around, we've thought of it as a cut-down subset of the 'real' Internet,” says Benedict Evans, Andreessen Horowitz
venture capitalist. “I'd suggest it's time to invert that - to think about mobile as the real internet and the desktop as the limited, cut-down version.”
That has implications for all markets--developed and developing--in every global region. There is a behavioral reality: people use their mobile devices to interact with Internet apps all the time, not only when “out and about.”
By some estimates “out and about” might represent the exclusive use mode for only about 10 percent of users. About 24 percent of users, according to a recent Ofcom survey, use their mobiles “only” or “mostly” at home.
Most use them everywhere.
Beyond behavior, there is the growing reality that, in developing markets, the mobile is the dominant platform for using the Internet.
In 2014, mobile Internet connections were more used than fixed connections by a three to one margin, according to the International Telecommunications Union.
In developing nations, mobile Internet connections were in 2015 5.5 times more prevalent than fixed connections, the ITU reports. In some reasons, the gap is even wider. In Africa, mobile Internet subscriptions outnumber fixed subscriptions by a 41:1 margin.
In many of the “emerging” Internet markets in Asia, mobile access is virtually the “only” access. Fixed network Internet access is used by a tenth of a percent of households in Cambodia, one percent in Indonesia and Lao Republic.
Fixed network access is purchased by just two percent of households in the Philippines, six percent of households in Thailand and eight percent of Malaysian households.
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