The start of a new year is a great time to recap on the previous one, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a little look into some statistics that were predicted for 2015. There are plenty of agencies and research groups out there which provide data and insights, but instead of detailing all of those, let’s pick out a few of the more interesting pieces of information, leaning heavily on the 2015 report by we are social.

Desktops are down, Portables are up.

Sales of traditional personal computers are down almost 10% but tablet and phone sales are still going strong. Mobile phone devices are the predominant format globally, but tablet usage is on the rise.

Globally:

• 62% of devices are desktops or laptops
• 31% of devices are mobile phones
• 7% of devices are tablet computers

In the UK:

• 58% of devices are desktops or laptops
• 27% of devices are mobile phones
• 15% of devices are tablets

People in the UK spend longer on the internet than they do watching television.

And almost half of that time could be social media alone.

89% of the UK Population uses the internet, and 50% of them use Social Media.

Even my mother is on Facebook. What I previously thought to be one of the first signs of the apocalypse has come to pass, but it’s only representative of the growing trend of adoption of the internet as another aspect of everyday life - 50% of the Total Population of the UK now has at least one active social media account.

64% of the UK Population shop online.

It’s not all Tweets, Likes and #selfies - researching and purchasing online is serious business, and although mobile purchases (at 18%) are a smaller slice of the e-commerce pie, with the increase in traffic from mobile and tablet devices, it really is high time we make sure that our online stores work properly with portable devices.

There are plenty of other interesting sources of data out there, such as the internet live stats and Government-backed data sets.  Happy New Year, and happy researching!