If not, you have a problem. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has just released data collected in July 2015 from about 53,000 households that clearly indicates the shift from wired internet to mobile-only internet users is accelerating. This means that making sure your online presence is designed with responsive web design (RWD) is more important than ever, so it is easy to read and navigate on a wide range of devices. And don’t expect mobile-only users to go to a special mobile version of your website. If your regular library website doesn’t look good as soon as they pop it up on their phone, chances are good that they won’t bother to look at you again. Unfortunately, about 40% of Ohio public library websites do not use RWD.
- Evolving technologies change the nature of Internet use (National Telecommunications and Information Administration | Giulia McHenry) “According to the data, three-quarters of American households using the Internet at home in 2015 still used wired technologies for high-speed Internet service, including cable, DSL, and fiber-optic connections. However, this represents a sizable drop in wired home broadband use, from 82 percent of online households in July 2013 to 75 percent two years later. Over this same period, the data also shows that the proportion of online households that relied exclusively on mobile service at home doubled between 2013 and 2015, from 10 percent to 20 percent.”
- New data: Americans are abandoning wired home Internet (The Washington Post | Brian Fung) “Today, nearly one-third of households earning less than $25,000 a year exclusively use mobile Internet to browse the Web. That’s up from 16 percent of households falling in that category in 2013. And they’re often cited as evidence of a major digital divide; struggling families with little money to afford a home Internet subscription must resort to free public WiFi at libraries and even McDonald’s to do homework, look for jobs and find information. But as the chart above shows, even people with higher incomes are ditching their wired Internet access at similar or even faster rates compared with people who don’t earn as much.”
- Smartphones rule the Internet (The Atlantic | Adrienne Lafrance) “Google confirmed last year that more searches come from mobile devices than computers in 10 countries, including the United States. Over the holiday season, Amazon said more than 60 percent of shoppers used mobile. And Wikipedia, which recently revamped the way it tracks site traffic, says it’s getting more mobile than desktop visits to its English language site.”
- More and more households are getting online solely through mobile devices (Mashable | Christina Warren) “The NTIA’s report states that for most households, wired broadband is still the preferred way to access the Internet. And when it comes to cost/performance, for many users, that will remain. But it’s interesting to see just how many users have migrated from wired broadband to mobile-only in the span of two years. If wireless carriers can continue to raise data caps, it stands to reason that more and more consumers, especially those who are more price conscious, will move to mobile-only Internet.”
Articles from Ohio Web Library:
- The emerging mobile Internet underclass: A critique of mobile Internet access. (Information Society, Oct.-Dec.2014, p.323-334 | Philip M. Napoli and Jonathan A. Obar)
- Responsive web design, discoverability, and mobile challenge. (Library Technology Reports, Aug./Sep.2013, p.29-30 | Bohyun Kim)
- Flexible everything: Getting responsive with web design. (Computers in Libraries, April 2013, p.12-16 | Jeremy Snell)
