Is mobile becoming the default gateway to the Internet?

The latest release of IDC’s Worldwide New Media Market Model report suggests that consumers are migrating away from PC-based Internet usage and are increasingly using mobile devices as their default gateway to the Internet. IDC says that the US leads that trend, with Western Europe and Japan only about two years behind.

In the US, the number of people accessing the Internet through PCs will shrink from 240 million consumers in 2012 to 225 million in 2016.

Karsten Weide, program VP of Media and Entertainment at IDC, says that in 2015, for the first time ever, there will be more US consumers accessing the Internet through mobile devices than through PCs:

“In the consumer world, mobile Internet usage is already beginning to displace PC usage, and the United States is leading this trend. There has been much talk about how the future of the Internet will be mobile first and PC second. In the US, that future is now.”

The report also finds that online PC activities will be impacted as consumers take their usage mobile. IDC expects that the share of users accessing social networks such as Facebook on their PCs will decline from 66 per cent in 2012 to 52 per cent in 2016.

Worldwide mobile advertising is expected to grow five-fold from $6 billion in 2011 to $28.8 billion in 2016, whilst global business-to-consumer (B2C) m-commerce spending will grow six-fold between 2011 and 2016, reaching $223 billion at the end of the forecast period. Weide observes that:

“The ‘Great PC Exodus’ on the Internet is happening because the PC was never truly a consumer product. Many consumers use them because there was no better alternative. Now, with the huge and growing installed base of more user-friendly tablets and smartphones, there are.”