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Five consumer technology trends for 2014

2. Your screens are your life

Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
A man takes a self-portrait with his mobile phone in front of a statue of China's late Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing Dec. 24, 2013. Mobile devices account for more than 17 percent of global Internet traffic and that share is growing fast.

  • By Gabriele Pansa Contributor

US adults spent nearly 45 percent of their overall media time with digital this year, eMarketer estimates, and it is reasonable to expect that this number will reach 50 percent soon. And increasingly this consumption is happening on multiple screens and at a faster pace than companies have been prepared for.

Mobile devices now account for more than 17 percent of global Internet traffic, according to Mashable, and growing by leaps and bound. Some analysts project they'll reach 30 percent in the near future. If current trends continue, Gartner suggests, tablets will outsell personal computers in 2015.

Already, the lines between mobile and desktop products is blurring, as evidenced by Microsoft's push ahead with a strategy that appears to merge both in the near future.

As more tasks migrate online (from booking reservations to keeping up with friends to making out a to-do list), the distinction between online and offline worlds will also become less distinct. 

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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