For Wi-Fi, PCs and Macs are Now a Minority

It's a big week for interesting stats relating to Internet usage breakdowns by device. Comscore has released numbers that say that the iPad accounts for 97 percent of tablet usage on the Web-no shocker there. And cloud networking company Meraki has published some data based on device usage numbers from its customers networks:

Whenever I look at numbers like these, I try to remind myself that we don't know how precisely they map to the world at large. But they're still fun to ponder.

Takeaways:

• In 2010, at least 64 percent of Wi-Fi users were using traditional computers-Windows PCs and Macs. In 2011, that's down to 36 percent. 58 percent of Wi-Fi users are on mobile devices-iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and Android devices.
• In 2010, a slight majority (53 percent) of Wi-Fi users were on Apple devices. In 2011, that's up to 60 percent. Only 23 percent are on Windows.
• Android accounted for a measly one percent last years; in 2011, it's a meaty 11 percent.
• iPad users consume 400 percent as much Wi-Fi data on average as owners of Android handsets, iPhones, and iPod Touches. That's presumably at least in part because a sizable percentage of iPad owners have Wi-Fi-only models, whereas all iPhone owners and most Android handset users can also get data over cellular networks. (I also imagine that iPads get far more use at home than phones do.)

I was startled to see Windows account for only 23 percent of Wi-Fi usage given that the vast majority of PCs on the planet run it. But many of those Windows machines are desktops, and desktops are far less likely to be on Wi-Fi than notebooks are.

In case you're curious, here are current stats for device usage here at Technologizer. (These are visits to a blog, so it's an entirely different sort of data than Meraki's figures for Wi-Fi usage by device-which is why my breakdown bears little resemblance to Meraki's breakdown.)

• Windows: 52 percent of visits (54 percent of these visits were via Windows 7)
• Mac OS X: 25 percent
• iPhone: 8 percent
• iPad: 8 percent
• Android: 4 percent
• Other: 3 percent
• iPod: 1 percent