comScore: 2018 Focus on the Future of the Global Web Report

According to a new comScore report, "Focus on the Future of the Global Web," U.S. website traffic is at its peak, and competition for visitors is intensifying on smartphones. Despite mobile devices accounting for the majority of online time, the number of U.S. desktop visitors still outnumbers mobile.

In the United States, mobile unique visitors account for 90% of the total number of desktop unique visitors. Among the 13 countries surveyed, only five have fewer mobile visitors than desktops, including the United States.

Conversely, India has almost four times as many mobile visitors as desktops, while Indonesia has 2.5 times as many mobile visitors as desktops.

It is worth noting that mobile visitors in these countries are largely unaffected by PCs, meaning they mostly surf the Internet using mobile devices only.

In the United States, however, mobile users and PC users largely overlap. According to comScore, as of May 2017, users who only use mobile devices accounted for only 12% of US Internet users, and the number of users who only use PCs is still larger than those who only use mobile.

Other findings:

1. Mobile device usage far exceeds PC usage

Americans spend more time online on mobile devices than on PCs, mainly due to higher usage of mobile devices. In December 2017, mobile devices accounted for 70.3% of Americans' online time, 2.5 times the amount of time Americans spend online on PCs each month, and a 66% increase from January 2016. Smartphones alone accounted for 61.9% of online time, although tablets' share declined slightly.

2. Apps are the winners on mobile devices

The share of time spent on mobile devices in apps varies slightly by country, ranging from the lowest in the UK (83%) to the highest in Argentina (95%). Apps account for 88% of mobile device time in the United States.

And this trend is the same on both smartphones (88%) and tablets (87%).

3. 160 websites and apps with 1 in 10 penetration rates among Americans

In the United States, the five most popular apps are Facebook, YouTube, Google Search, FB Messenger and Snapchat.

4. Social apps are highly used, but games are the opposite

Smartphone app users spend half of their time accessing their favorite app (49%). However, games are an exception. The top five game products account for 34.1% of the time that American users visit this category of apps. Entertainment and communication apps are more concentrated. The top five entertainment apps contribute 83.5% of the time spent on these apps, and social media (93.9%) and instant messaging (94.2%) are even more serious.

5. Mobile leads in video viewing, followed by PC

In the U.S., 68% of video viewing is on a mobile device. Canada (51%) lags behind the U.S. and the U.K. (69%).

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