IDC predicts more US mobile internet users than fixed line users by 2015

Aided by an additional 700m new users joining in the next four years.

Analyst firm IDC claims that the growth in sales of smartphones and tablets, which are leaving feature phones behind, means the number of US mobile internet users will rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.6% by 2015.

Its latest report predicts that as the popularity of smartphones and tablets continues to grow, the number of users accessing the internet from PCs will first flatten out, and then gradually decrease.

Western Europe and Japan are said to not be far behind the US with the technological transference. This supports the news we reported last week that for the first time ever, smartphone shipments had overtaken that of feature phone shipments in Western Europe.

IDC also claims that the number of internet users globally will grow from two billion in 2010 to 2.7 billion in 2015, when 40% of the world's population will have access.

"Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the internet. Soon, more users will access the web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it's going to make the Internet a very different place," says Karsten Weide, research vice president, media and entertainment at IDC.