All the Important and Surprising Trends in Mobile Web Browsing, in Seven Charts

Adobe just issued its semi-regular State of Mobile Benchmark, part of its Digital Index . It’s a collection of charts showing how dynamic the market for mobile computing continues to be. This past quarter saw explosive growth in some categories, for instance, rates at which people are using mobile devices to access social networks and adoption of smart phones in Asia. There were more than a few surprises: thanks to the iPad, Apple’s iOS mobile operating system is now the leading way to access the web from a mobile device in the US.

Tablets are now driving more web traffic than smartphones

Tablets are very much direct replacements for PCs, rather than “mobile” devices in the sense that a smartphone is, suggests Adobe’s data. For example, when people browse the web via a tablet, they visit 70% more web pages per visit than when they use a smartphone. As a result, while there are many more smartphones than tablets in the world, tablets are now driving more traffic to websites than phones are.

People browsing stores on tablets are 3x as likely to buy something

Looking at the conversion rates (i.e., the rate at which someone browsing an online store makes a purchase) we see yet more evidence that tablets are direct replacements for PCs. Smartphone browsers convert just 0.7% of the time, while people on tablets convert 2.2% of the time and PCs 3.3% of the time. This suggests that people are moving to tablets (or PCs) to complete their transactions in a place where they have more screen real estate (and a better keyboard).

Read more at Quartz .