Week 11 EOC: The Future of the Internet

The future of the Internet seems to be a mix of many different predictions. It's been proven that although future events CAN be predicted, they will not always be accurate. So far, some predictions seem to be heading toward the right track. Many have said that the Internet will be going mobile. People want their Internet on the go, not having to be at home to get access or be on a clunky laptop all the time.  “

“There are now 2.3 billion Internetusers worldwide, which is nearly a third of the world’s population and thatnumber is growing at 8% per year. But what’s more startling is there are now1.1 billion 3G mobile subscribers and that they are increasing at 37% peryear. What’s significant about that? Two things: first it means thatalready a significant proportion of the world’s population is accessing theinternet via a mobile phone rather than via a fixed-line connection…”

Nowadays people are relying on their phones for Internet access, while computers are still being used, this is slowly changing. There are new users of the Internet today, and they are changing the way the Internet will be used, teenagers.

“95% of teens ages 12-17 are online,76% use social networking sites, and 77% have cell phones. Moreover, 96% ofthose ages 18-29 are Internet users, 84% use social networking sites, and 97%have cell phones. Well over half of those in that age cohort have smartphonesand 23% own tablet computers like iPads.”

Because these are the new faces of the Internet, companies are going to use that to market the next generation. New smartphones are going to be keep being made, and mobile application growth will explode, because this is becoming the daily life not only for newer generations, but most of the population today.

“The growing market of Apps, the study reports:

• According to Cisco, by 2016, there will be 10 billion mobile Internet devices in use globally.

• Smartphone traffic will grow to 50 times the size it is today by 2016.

• Google’s Android Market hit 10 billion downloads by December 2011.

• Android users have been downloading apps at a rate of 1 billion a month.

• Apple announced March 3, 2012, 25billion apps had been downloaded.”

The future of the Internet is going mobile, whether we like it or not, this is going to be a huge change to the web as we know it.