Mobile web users to top wireline users by 2015

More U.S. Internet users will access Internet through mobile devices than through PCs or other wireline devices by 2015, market research company International Data Corporation (IDC) said in its latest study released on Monday. According to IDC, the number of mobile Internet users will grow by a compound annual growth rage of 16.6 percent between 2010 and 2015, as mobile devices sales, such as smartphones and media tablets, explode. "The impact of smartphone and especially, media tablet adoption will be so great that the number of users accessing the Internet through PCs will first stagnate and then slowly decline," said IDC in a forecast. Western Europe and Japan will not be far behind the U.S. in following this trend, the study noted. IDC also predicts that some 40 percent of the world's population will have access to Internet in 2015, when the total number of Internet users will grow to 2.7 billion from 2 billion in 2010. "Forget what we have taken for granted on how consumers use the Internet," Karsten Weide, IDC's research vice president of media and entertainment, said in a statement. "Soon, more users will access the Web using mobile devices than using PCs, and it's going to make the Internet a very different place," he added.