In just two years, mobile went from about 5% of all Black Friday purchases to 24% according to a report from IBM. And of that traffic the iPad dominated with 10% of all shopping traffic and a whopping 88% of all mobile traffic.
Think about that for a minute.
A device that didn’t exist 3 years ago is now responsible for 10% of shopping traffic.
A few of my friends say the PC will be around forever, and they are probably right. Engineers, designers, and many professionals will still require the processing and graphical performance found only on a workstation. I work for a company that designs and builds these type of systems, and the demand continues to be strong.
But the following slide should scare the crap out of Microsoft and Intel. From the mid 80’s still 2009, they were the dominant computing platform. If you owned a PC during that time it likely ran a version of Windows and was powered by an Intel processor.
But today Android + iOS comprise 45% of all computing operating systems while Windows is down to a 35% share from nearly 90% just five years ago.
With the massive growth of smartphones, Windows is no longer the dominate platform, and this is the first chart I’ve seen that visually shows what’s happening. No wonder Microsoft is willing to spend billions to push their Windows Phone 8 platform into a market that has so far ignored it.
More people are now using a phone or tablet running Android or iOS than Windows. Many analysts see that PC sales are slowing, yet upwards of 350 million will be sold in 2013. That seems impressive until you hear that 1.5 billion smartphones will be sold during the same time frame.
We’re witnessing a changing of the guard.
Some will see that 24% mobile shopping traffic and disregard it. “PCs are still king!” they will say.
And they are right.
But for how long?
*Graphic taken from Internet Trends presentation from Mary Meeker.
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