http://i.imgur.com/aOXsraC.png
According to the same data, Google owns 87% of the mobile market, and I venture to guess that number is actually higher and will continue to climb in 2015 as mobile will continue to dominate the consumer market.
I also believe that this post-PC era has been nothing but bullshit. Yes, PC sales have been declining, but that's only because people stopped feeling the need to upgrade. And yes, mobile phones are here to stay, with their numbers rising and their utility growing, but if you take a look at tablets, lo and behold, sales are declining and the ones already bought are probably gathering dust.
Most importantly is that Google's Android does not own 87% of the mobile market. If Apple would switch to an alternative as the default, that would be a big blow to Google. And if this move by Mozilla ends up working out without Firefox losing market share, that might end up encouraging Apple to do so.
I thought this was the case with most "casual" PC users who only used it for email and Internet shopping. My wife fits this category, who will never use my laptop, ever. She even does basic spreadsheeting activities on the iPad with Google Sheets.
Are tablets really sat around gathering dust?
Your point is that casual PC users only need a PC for email and Internet shopping and things like that and that they would be better served by a tablet. My point of view is that this assertion isn't necessarily true.
My wife still uses our iPad 1 to watch Amazon Prime on, despite it being years since the last iOS update that would run on it. I'm quite happy with my Asus Transformer which is stuck on Android 4.2.
As the author of the comment you're replying to, I can agree with that. I also own 2 tablets, both of which are used by my 4-year old to play educational games. They are great for that. However, I'm limiting his time spent on these games and overall they are gathering dust.
This is because, while they seemed useful to me at first, they are big and bulky and not good for productive work and all the use-cases I had for them (i.e. reading websites and email, watching videos, playing some games from time to time) have been fulfilled by my smartphone. And here's the problem with a tablet - I always have my smartphone with me, whereas for a tablet I have to make the conscious decision of taking it with me wherever I go. And if I have to make such a decision, I would rather take my 13-inch MacBook.
Of course, one could talk about a convergence of smartphones and tablets. Heck, I just bought a Nexus 6 last week, which is a freakishly big 6-inch phone. And I love it, precisely because it lets me do things that are comfortable to do on a tablet.
But here's the problem that I'm seeing, from personal experience of course - screen size matters a lot when speaking about things you can do with a device and a 6-inch phone is already too big to fit in my jeans pockets. I'm not seeing phones getting any bigger than that, because of portability. I love my Nexus 6, but I'm already wondering about how I'll carry it with me in the summer. But 6 inches is also too small for many use-cases.
This translates in my mind in one thing - phablets like the Nexus 6 or the iPhone 6+ will take over the tablets market-share. But because of their size, PCs and laptops will still rule supreme, these classes of products (smartphones and laptops/PCs) being actually complementary.
Anyway, any of number of reports and studies say that the percentage of e-commerce visits and purchases from mobile devices is going up, and has been for years. Direct measurements of user activity show the growing importance of mobile.
I'm still baffled that ad networks allow advertisers to inject arbitrary javascript into their banner ads. Why on earth are they allowed to deliver anything other than an image?
Anyways, I'll never browse the web without AdBlock again and I'm astounded that so many people are able to do so.
(Of course it may be that nobody privacy conscious uses Android/iOS at all...)