More people use the internet on Android than Windows
It's a testament to how important smartphones have become.
It's a milestone day for the mobile world: Android's internet use has overtaken that on Windows PCs for the first time. According to StatCounter, Google's phone platform represented 37.93 percent of tracked internet activity in March, just barely edging out Windows' 37.91 percent. You could see this coming for a while, of course. Smartphone shipments overtook PCs roughly 6 years ago, and people have been spending more time on their phones than their computers. Still, it's a sign of just how important smartphones have become to many people -- and when you see where Android is the front runner, you'll understand why.
StatCounter notes that Android was helped in no small part by a surging Asian market. When smartphones dominate in countries like China and India, that's going to have a dramatic effect on worldwide data. And in both Asia and Africa, many people don't have the luxury of owning both a smartphone and a PC -- their phone may be their only consistent gateway to the internet. When smartphone shipments eclipse those of PCs (1.5 billion phones in 2016 versus 270 million PCs), though, it's clear that smartphones are democratizing internet access in a way that isn't practical for (typically) pricier, less essential computers.
