The year 2002 was a turning-point for the telephone, invented 126 years earlier. For the first time, the number of mobile phones overtook the number of fixed-line ones, making the telephone a predominantly mobile technology. During 2013 the same thing will happen to the internet, just 44 years after its ancestor, ARPANET, was first switched on. The number of internet-connected mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablet computers, will exceed the number of desktop and laptop personal computers (PCs) in use, according to figures from Morgan Stanley.
That does not mean that mobile devices will displace PCs altogether. The rise of mobile phones, after all, did not mean that fixed-line phones stopped working, even if their number is now in decline. The centre of gravity of the internet will have shifted.
Read more at The Economist
