Despite growing mobile internet use, 89 percent of Germans still prefer to view web content on a desktop computer or laptop, according to a survey of 1,000 internet users in that country. Tablets and smartphones are favored by 6 percent and 5 percent of Germans, respectively, for accessing the web.

Tarifica’s Take

We find this item to be a small cautionary sidebar to the global story of smartphone improvement and expansion. The fact that such a huge percentage of users in a very tech-savvy and sophisticated country still prefer to view internet content on computers is very telling and should not be ignored by mobile operators. The experience of viewing rich web content is still apparently richer, for many people, on a large screen with non-virtual keyboard control than it is on a handheld device, even a tablet. For mobile operators, this statistic should be a reminder to keep developing innovative USB data-only plans for laptops. For fixed operators, it is confirmation that their market share is secure due to strong demand for desktops and non-mobile use of laptops for internet use.