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To date, there are still more installed PCs in the world than there are smartphones or tablets. Next year, that's likely to change.  According to projections from mobile analyst Ben Evans, the number of smartphones in use around the world will pass that of PCs for the first time next year. According to a chart from Evans, the estimate of installed PCs in the world is a little north of 1.6 billion. The global install base of smartphones is near 1.3 billion and growing at a much faster clip than PCs. If you add tablets into the equation (with a tick more than 200 million installed across the world) then mobile devices are almost on par with PCs already. Evans predicts that the total number of installed smartphones in the world will eclipse PCs in 2014 sometime in the second quarter.

IDC predicts that 314.2 million PCs (desktop and laptop/notebook) will be shipped in 2013, down from 349.4 in 2012. That is a 10.1% shortfall year-over-year, the biggest single year drop in PC history.  On the other end, smartphones are predicted to eclipse one billion shipments this year. IDC shows smartphone shipment growth of 39.3% year-over-year with little sign of slowing down.

IDC predicts that 1.7 billion smartphones will ship in 2017, versus estimated PC shipments of 305.1 million. Shipments, of course, don't equal sales of actual devices to consumers. It is also important to note that even sales do not mean an addition to the installed base, as many as older models are replaced by newer ones. In aggregate, the install base rises over time—just not at the rate of shipments or sales. 

77% of mobile searches take place in the home or at work where a PC is readily available. Whether you call it lazy or convenient, the simple fact is smartphones and tablets are quickly becoming the go-to computing devices for consumers.

In the post-PC era, customers expect companies to provide experiences aligned with their needs and abilities, in the right context, and at their moment of need.

Today, content is the interface and navigation is performed directly through gestures and voice commands. As a result, interactions are becoming multi-modal, engaging users through multiple senses.

. Google Shortcuts

2. Scribble

Going mobile may be the mantra for a lot of tech companies these days, but if they’re in the business of targeting teenagers with their services, perhaps they should think twice: over 37 percent of teens use laptops, and a further 30 percent rely on desktop machines to surf online and engage with digital content, but only 13.5 percent use smartphones and only five percent use tablets, according to a new study out today from Intel-owned security specialists McAfee.

By far, the most popular social media site among teens is Facebook, with 89.5 percent of respondents using the site. Twitter comes in second with 48.7 percent and Google+ not actually that far behind at 41.5 percent. Tumblr (33 percent of all teens), it notes, is more popular with teen girls than boys; while 4chan (23%)  is showing the reverse trend: and McAfee notes that both sites are growing faster than other social networking sites.

Pinterest is being used nearly as much as Myspace (20%; 18%)

As the number of Internet-enabled consumer devices continues to grow, so does the propensity of consumers to sequentially use multiple devices to complete a single online task. In fact, according to a new study from Google, 90 percent of people move among devices to accomplish a goal.

Examples of how consumers sequentially use multiple devices for a single task include opening an email on a smartphone and then finishing reading it on a home PC and looking up product specs on a laptop after seeing a TV commercial

The other primary way of using multiple devices is simultaneous use, meaning using more than one device at the same time. This includes both multitasking — performing different tasks on different devices — and complementary usage such as looking up a product online while watching a TV commercial.

Google’s Matt Cutts said that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if mobile search exceeded desktop queries this year. A similar comment was made by a Google speaker informally during a roundtable discussion at the International Franchising Association conference in New Orleans earlier this year

The comments above refer to global query volumes not in the US or North America where PC-based search still far outstrips mobile queries. However in many developing countries, such as India, mobile internet traffic has eclipsed the desktop.

Globally mobile traffic is about 30 percent of all internet activity. That’s also the case in North America.

social media use on mobile devices rose 63% between native apps and the mobile Web in the United States in 2012.

Between PCs and mobile devices, Americans spent 121 billion minutes on social media in July 2012, an increase of 37% (88 billion minutes). 

In the United States, 152 million people accessed Facebook from their PCs against 152.7 million through either native apps or the mobile Web.

Adobe analyzed more than 1 billion visits for more than 1,000 websites and found that 8% of traffic came from tablets. That ranks ahead of the 7% of visits that came from smartphones. Of course, that leaves 85% or so percent of Web traffic still coming from desktop PCs and laptops. 

no matter how much we harp on the notion that the mobile Web is not just the future, but also the present, the vast majority of Web traffic still comes from the legacy that is the PC. 

Mobile advertising is continuing to grow, but it's doing so at the cost of desktop ad spending

U.S. digital ad spending to grow 14% this year and reach $41.9 billion, much of that incremental growth ($7.7 billion) will be driven by spending on mobile, not desktop, ads. In fact, spending on desktop ads is expected to decrease after it hits its peak in 2014

Microsoft's own employees admit the one big drawback for Windows 8: this is an operating system designed for touch screens, which many legacy PCs don't have yet. This means Windows 8 market penetration is reliant on brand-new laptops and PCs that do have touch-screen capabilities, or the sales of mobile devices like tablets and smartphones.

According to the ITU's "facts and figures" publication, mobile penetration rates (pdf) are now about equal to the global population - including an 89% penetration rate in "developing countries," which currently have the highest mobile growth rates.

nearly everyone on the planet has a mobile phone - or will have one soon enough.

"mobile broadband" subscriptions have grown from 278 million in 2007 - when the iPhone was first introduced - to 2.1 billion in 2013 - an annual growth rate of 40%. 

the role of content strategy is focused on the brand’s relationship with its target audience

with your content. Desktop PCs and laptops are where the internet matured, but nothing in technology stands still – and while platforms such as game consoles and TVs are currently underutilised, this will not be for long. It’s clear that mobile devices will be key in the future, but smartphones and tablets are not yet fully featured computers, and this poses one of the biggest challenges.

when planning you will need to ensure that your content is planned and built so that it renders in the way you intend on different browsers, operating systems, native mobile interfaces, mobile applications, media players and access technologies.

Growth in social networking fueled by mobile: Mobile users spend on average 3.1 hours per week on social networking sites, vs. 2.2 hours on email. Furthermore, consumers expect their use of social networking on mobiles to increase more than through PC.

According to GWI, mobile access to social media sites actually overtook traditional PC access in Q4 of 2013, as 66 percent of users accessed their social networks by mobile compared to 64 percent by computer. However, microblogging sites — which include Twitter and Tumblr — are apparently best reserved for the tablet, dominating over both traditional computers and mobile for usage.

No matter what the device, Facebook remains top dog across the board overall – account ownership, active usage and visit frequency, across all regions — although it has seen minor decline as other social networks gain mindshare. The key winner in this year’s new class of social networks is Instagram: A nearly 25% rise in active users betwen Q2 and Q4 of 2013 bring the estimated total of active users on the website to more than 90 million. It’s also popular for the kids, too, as teens represent the dominant demographic on the site, with a 39 percent share of active users. According to GWI, the only other social networks that can boast teens as their dominant users are Youtube and Tumblr.

GWI’s data only indicates that Facebook’s teens shrank two percentage points, leaving a rough user estimate of 34.19 million