Web users in the U.K. are becoming increasingly mobile-centric.
- Smartphones and tablets now combine for 37% of web traffic to the government web domains associated with the suffix GOV.UK in the first week of January 2014, compared to 63% from desktop, according to a U.K. government study. Since the usage of government websites and services is so diverse, it's a good benchmark for anyone looking at how much mobile traffic they should expect in the U.K. market.
- In the same period two years ago, smartphones and tablets only made up 23% of GOV.UK web traffic.
That's a rapid progression away from PCs and toward mobile in the span of one year. Google pits U.K.'s smartphone penetration at roughly 62%, which puts it on par with the U.S.
To get a better understanding of where that new mobile traffic is coming from, The U.K. Government Digital Service took a more in-depth look at operating systems and devices.
- Web traffic from iOS devices, iPhones and iPads, accounted for 22.5% of all traffic to the site during the first three weeks of January 2014, which is up from a 16.3% share during the same period in January 2013.
- Android's share of site traffic jumped to 22.5% over the same period, compared to just a 6.6% share of traffic in January 2013.
- Each of those mobile platforms continues to eat away at Microsoft Windows. In one year, Windows has ceded over 10 percentage points of traffic share. The Windows Phone platform is still too small to break out of the "other" category.
Mac site traffic stayed stable. Within the "Other" category, Windows phone traffic gained 0.4 percentage points of share while Linux, BlackBerry, and Chrome OS each declined or remained at the same level.
Click here to download the chart and data in Excel
But it's Apple devices that are winning out in the U.K. mobile race.
Among the top 100 mobile devices surveyed, the iPhone and iPad combined for over a 20% share of site visits.
That means that one out of five GOV.UK visits are coming from either an iPhone or an iPad.
The iPhone and iPad far exceeds traffic from any other single device, as Samsung Galaxy phones combine for around 3.5% of the sites' traffic. Samsung's Galaxy Tab tablet, Google's Nexus 7 tablet and the Amazon Kindle Fire tablet don't break the 1% threshold.
Developed markets, like the U.K. and the U.S. still drive a combined 66% share of Apple's global revenue, despite all the talk about Apple in China.
Time and again, these users have illustrated just how heavily they use Apple's devices, and how active they are on the Internet. And though device penetration may be nearing saturation, these users can become the foundation for future iTunes and App Store revenue growth.
