Mobile is on the rise and has been for quite sometime. In fact, mobile has shifted from a phenomenon to a norm, and for app developers having an mobile presence is now not an option – it is table stakes.
Yet despite a massive growth in usage, there are still more PCs in the world than there are smartphones or tablets. But will that change in 2014?
Analysts say, yes. According to Dan Rowinski, of ReadWriteMobile, the number of smartphones in use around the world will surpass PCs during 2014:
“The broad stroke numbers are very easy to see. IDC predicts that 314.2 million PCs(desktop and laptop/notebook) will be shipped in 2013, down from 349.4 in 2012. That is a 10.1% shortfall year-over-year, the biggest single year drop in PC history.
On the other end, smartphones are predicted to eclipse one billion shipments this year. IDC shows smartphone shipment growth of 39.3% year-over-year with little sign of slowing down.
IDC predicts that 1.7 billion smartphones will ship in 2017, versus estimated PC shipments of 305.1 million. Shipments, of course, don’t equal sales of actual devices to consumers. It is also important to note that even sales do not mean an addition to the installed base, as many as older models are replaced by newer ones. In aggregate, the install base rises over time—just not at the rate of shipments or sales.”
The adoption of mobile devices over the past year has had a dramatic increase. So dramatic that Rowinski adds the mobile trend isn’t necessarily a trend anymore, “At some point this ceases to be a ‘mobile’ phenomenon. Instead of ‘mobile shopping,’ it is just ‘shopping’ … through whatever computer happens to be close at hand. As smartphones overtake PCs globally, the notion that anything is seen as a mobile trend ceases to be important.”
Mobile is no longer a buzz word, it is a standard. For companies, 2014 means investing more heavily in the quality of their mobile apps and websites – because as mobile becomes a standard, so too does app quality for users.