Digital 2025: device trends for 2025
The number of people using laptops and desktops to access the internet continues to decline, with just 61.5 percent of online adults using these devices to access connected services in Q3 2024.
That’s only slightly lower than the 61.8 percent figure that we reported this time last year, but it’s quite a lot lower than the figures we saw at the start of this decade.
For example, more than 7 in 10 internet users – 72.3 percent – still went online via laptop and desktop devices in Q1 2020, with 66 percent saying that they used their own personal device to do so.
Today, that figure has fallen to 53.6 percent, while 26.8 percent use a laptop or desktop provided by their employer (note that roughly 19 percent of respondents use both their own computer and one provided by their place of work).
However, while marketers will want to keep an eye on these trends, recent declines mask the continued importance of laptops and desktops for more than 6 in 10 connected adults.
Geographic variations
GWI’s research suggests that computers continue to be a popular choice across much of Europe, with more than three-quarters of the region’s internet users (75.5 percent) saying that they continue to use laptops and desktops to go online today.
That figure is only slightly lower in the United States too, with 72.7 percent of American internet users saying that they still use computers to access the internet.
Conversely, these devices are significantly less prevalent across much of Africa and Asia, with fewer than half of Indian internet users saying that they use laptops or desktops to access connected content and services.
People in South-East Asia are also less likely to use computers for their online activities, with Vietnam, Indonesia, and Thailand all falling below the global average.
There are exceptions to these regional trends though, with 79.1 percent of adult internet users in South Africa saying that they use computers for at least some of their connected activities.
Mobile activity
But the move to mobile is also clearly evident in Statcounter’s latest data, with the company’s analysis indicating that mobiles accounted for more than 63 percent of web page requests in December 2024.
That figure is almost double the 31.79 percent that we saw this time ten years ago, and while device shares do tend to fluctuate over time, there’s still a clear trend in favour of mobile devices when it comes to how people access the web.
However, for added context, it’s interesting to note that web browsing only accounts for a small proportion of total smartphone activity.
The latest intelligence from data.ai indicates that the world’s mobile users spend less than 6 percent of their total smartphone time using browsers and search engine apps, which illustrates just how important “native” apps have become to the mobile environment.
But web browsing accounts for an even smaller share of cellular data traffic, with Ericsson’s latest analysis revealing that apps in this category currently only account for 2.09 exabytes (EB) per month, out of a total of close to 177 EB.
For perspective, Ericsson’s figures suggest that the typical smartphone only consumes about 300 MB of mobile data per month for web browsing activities, out of a monthly average of 21.6 GB per device.
Device demographics
Age also plays a role in determining how likely people are to use different devices for their online activities.
Overall, younger people are less likely to use computers, whereas older people have a stronger tendency towards devices with larger screens and more tactile interfaces.
Mobiles are still the most popular devices across all age groups, but men over the age of 65 are actually more likely to use computers to access the internet than they are to use a mobile.
Interestingly, there are tangible differences in device preference by gender across all age groups, but those differences appear to become more pronounced with age.
Time spent by device
However, despite the difference in overall adoption, it’s interesting to note that the share of time attributable to each class of device is more balanced.
On average, internet users spend 3 hours and 46 minutes per day using the internet on mobile devices, compared with an average of 2 hours and 52 minutes per day using the internet on computers.
Relatively speaking, this means that computers account for just under 57 percent of total online activity, compared with just over 43 percent for mobiles.
That share balance has evolved meaningfully over recent years though, and as recently as 2018, computers were still the dominant device category when it came to share of online time.
The use of computers in the workplace will likely mean that laptops and desktops continue to play an important role in overall internet access for the foreseeable future, but we can expect the trend towards mobile devices to continue when it comes to personal internet use.
Having said that, data from Statista indicates that computers still account for close to half of all ecommerce purchases.
Once again, a trend towards mobile is evident in this data, but even the latest figures show that ecommerce merchants would be missing out on almost half of the potential market if they didn’t cater to desktop shoppers too.
So, as I’ve suggested in previous years, it seems the optimum device strategy is still mobile first, but not mobile only.
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This article is a sub-section of our Digital 2025 Global Overview Report.
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