“Mobile phones have overtaken computers as the most popular device for getting online in China, the government said yesterday, as it announced the number of web users had hit 538 million,” The Malaysian Insider reports.
“China has the world’s biggest online population, with nearly four out of 10 of its 1.3 billion people now using the web, according to a report from the state-linked China Internet Network Information Center,” MI reports. “Until this year, a majority of Chinese web users accessed the Internet via computers.”
MI reports, “But smartphones have allowed more and more rural Chinese to go online in areas not covered by fixed-line networks, the report said. Nearly 52 per cent of users who started to use the Internet this year are from the countryside.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bodes well for Apple!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “fatfreddy” for the heads up.]
Mobile – The Achilles Heel that took down an accident of history: Micro$oft.
A real world parable of the King of the Mountain on a defensible hill controlling ultimate power over the hilltop…
Microsoft lost site of the masses and what they really want down on the flatlands, which was “anything but MS Office”. The average Joe wants to send and receive snippets.
Asia has long used phones for ad hoc computing and networking. The life’s blood of such a phenomenon is called Teen Spirit.
[You can’t buy it, you can only hope its slashing vortex touches you even in some small way.]
Homes in Asia are small by our standards and the power fluctuates maddeningly at the worst times, but phones are robust and you can hide them.
Computers are nice, in Asia, but “most” families would rather buy a new television that isn’t made of wood.
Teens here too. Their primary computing device is a smart phone or tablet. While MS was shoring up it’s desktop monopoly, Apple & Google leapfroged it.
Balmer didn’t even know what was happening.
Wonder if apple has a discount program for Foxconn and the other assemblers?