14 DAY TRIAL // Data provided by market research firm StatCounter for 2016 shows that mobile web traffic has exceeded the one on the desktop in late 2016, confirming once again that companies investing in the mobile business are doing the right thing, at least in the short term.
According to this January to December 2016 chart, the desktop share dropped from 55.86 percent in the first month of the last year to 44.79 percent in the last month, while the mobile industry had a completely opposite performance.
The market share of mobile devices improved from 38.88 percent in January 2016 to 50.31 percent 12 months later, managing to overtake the desktop in November 2016 (48.25 percent versus 46.93 percent).
Microsoft is doing the wrong thing
While Microsoft is the big winner on the desktop, where it continues to record important gains thanks to the Windows operating system, the Redmond-based software giant is doing the wrong thing in mobile, where its investments are dropping substantially.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform is losing market share almost every single month and developers are gradually giving up on the operating system to concentrate on Android and iOS. All of these are happening with Microsoft not saying a single thing about how it sees the future of its mobile business, fueling the uncertainty that does nothing more than to drive everyone to rival platforms.
At this point, it’s even believed that Microsoft could give up on its Lumia brand entirely, which means that in terms of hardware, partners would be the only ones trying to keep Windows phones alive. On the other hand, Redmond could be working on a one-of-a-kind flagship called Surface Phone, which could see daylight either later this year or in early 2018.
In the meantime, mobile platforms keep growing and as this chart shows, nothing seems to stop them, with the desktop, and consequently Microsoft, losing ground every month. The growth of the mobile business is likely to continue in the next months and throughout 2017, and it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft deals with it without investing in mobile.