Ina Fried

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Mobile Devices Now Make Up About 20 Percent of U.S. Web Traffic

Mobile Web browsing continues to take off, with smartphones and tablets accounting for 20 percent of Web traffic in the U.S. and Canada, according to a new report.

The analysis, from online advertising network Chitika, finds that those stodgy old PCs still produce just under 80 percent of Web traffic, with smartphones accounting for 14.6 percent and tablets making up 5.6 percent.

Other findings of note, Windows Phone now accounts for a third as much traffic as BlackBerry devices. Undoubtedly its market share is far less than that, but its more powerful browser and larger screen likely make it more conducive to Web surfing.

Also, as it has seen in the past, Chitika said that tablet and mobile phone Internet usage peak in the evening hours. That’s when people leave their computers for a bit and pretend to have a real life, while nonetheless staring at their phones or sitting on the couch watching TV and simultaneously pawing an iPad.

Speaking of iPads, Chitika says that 95 percent of tablet Web traffic comes from an Apple device, compared to phones, where Apple’s share is 72 percent, compared to 26 percent for Android devices.

On the desktop, Chitika says that just over 85 percent of Web traffic comes from Windows machines, compared with slightly more than 13 percent stemming from Macs.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik