November 24, 2010, 12:33 PM — In case you were worried by headlines that say more than 90 percent of users now access the Web more often using mobile devices than laptops or desktops -- we haven't hit the tipping point beyond which every IT system you build has to be mobile first and anything else second.
The stories are based on the latest edition of a survey by Opera Software, which posted the latest edition of its State of the Mobile Web this morning.
The survey included more than 300,000 people, so the sample size is a lot better than most of the surveys you see in the tech business. The clearest results, in this edition at least, focus on users aged between 18 and 27. That's a prime demographic because they're the ones whose computing proclivities you're going to have to support in a couple of years, and for whom you'd better start planning.
They're not the core population in most U.S.-based companies, though.
All the respondents were users of Opera Mini, which was designed for smartphones -- although the survey also said many were using older phones-- so there's a bias in the survey population that pretty well invalidates the mobile/stationary question in the first place.
And, most of the respondents live in countries other than the U.S.
Normally that would give a satisfyingly international picture of mobile IT use. In this case the way cell networks developed in other countries is so different that the use model is still very different from what you see in the U.S.
In India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa, more than 90 percent of respondents said they use mobile more than stationary hardware. The majority of U.S. -based users also use mobile more often (they're Opera Mini users, remember), but the split is 51 percent/49 percent.
