ReadWriteWeb

The tablet revolution. The post-PC era. The smartphone explosion. Whatever label you want to apply to it, personal computing is changing. People are spending more time with smaller devices like tablets and smartphones and less time on desktops and laptops. This been evident for awhile, but the trend is still relatively young and the data points are only just beginning to trickle in.

For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple's quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

The growth of the mobile Web is on a steady rise. While pundits throw around words like "explosive" and "outrageous" the more precise word is probably "consistent." According to analytics firm StatCounter, users accessing the Web through mobile devices has almost doubled every year since 2009. In its latest report, StatCounter says that global Internet usage through mobile devices rose to 8.5%, nearly doubling the 2011 figure of 4.3%.

StatCounter's analytics only include cellphones, excluding tablets from the mix. The global leader in mobile Web use is Nokia at nearly 40% of usage. The firm believes that Nokia's global dominance is due to high penetration in emerging markets like India. Apple is a strong No. 2 globally, while leading use in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Well, here we are in Twentytwelve. Supposedly it's the "year of the mobile" and all of our predictions about how we are going to use our mobile phones will finally come true.

Although I believe this year will be a pivotal point in the history of mobile technology, we've got a long way to go. Currently the mobile Web is like a gangly eight year old who, when you gaze upon you sense feelings of annoyance, intrigue and hope for a better future. We've all been there and it ain't pretty.

Google has launched GoMo, an initiative to mobilize websites for better user experiences. It features compelling graphics, tips about why and how to go mobile, case studies and a site tester, as well as a list of featured paid vendors who make mobile sites.

Google reports that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a site that's not mobile friendly, but user engagement increases by 85% with a mobile-friendly design. That trend is appearing around the world; consumers are way ahead of businesses on mobile. GoMo is a concerted effort to help companies catch up.

Apple released the latest version of its mobile operating system two weeks ago, boasting 25 million installs within the first week.

In addition to over 200 new features, iOS 5 came with the promise of enhanced speed. Just how much faster is it? When it comes to mobile Web browsing, iOS 5 loads pages slightly more than twice as fast as its predecessor, iOS 4.

Google has announced a shift in policy to reward sites with good mobile optimization with better AdWords performance. If you promote your site with Google AdWords, your ads will drive traffic at a lower cost if they link to your mobile-optimized site.

The blog post cites a recent study that found that 61% of users are unlikely to return to a website that offered a bad mobile Web experience. This adjustment to AdWords is an incentive for site administrators to improve mobile experiences.

It was a matter of time before a mobile development company made a framework that makes it very simple to create mobile Websites. Web2Mobile has launched a product called FiddleFly that allows companies to easily create a mobile presence with templates, themes with drag-and-drop ease.

Mobile and Web developers have been dreading it, but the cut-and-paste revolution that dominated late 1990s Web design is coming to mobile. Unlike the 1990s though, where Web pages were static digital posters, the mobile version of this evolution can at least create dynamic sites that users can interact with on their smartphones and tablets.

AddThis, Clearspring's online content sharing platform, has just arrived in a format for mobile app developers to take advantage of, on both iOS and Android ( the latter in beta). "Everything is shifting to mobile very quickly," explains AddThis CEO Hooman Radfar. "Our community of 9 million plus publishers are building more and more for the mobile Web, and they want the same functionality for mobile apps."

With the new suite of tools including AddThis for the Mobile Web, AddThis for iOS SDK, and the forthcoming SDK for Android, that will finally be possible.

Strangeloop president Joshua Bixby decided to take a look at Steve Souders' old claim that 80% of performance issues happen at the front-end. It turns out that for desktop browsers, that number is now at around 85%. But for mobile Web browsers, the number is more like 97%. He published the results here.

Regarding how large the mobile Web's front-end response time, Bixby wrote "I expected this number to be higher than the desktop number, but not this high."

What is the future of the mobile Internet? Are native applications going to be the dominant form of digital interaction? Will new and developing browser technologies like HTML5 make the mobile Web preferable to apps? Developers, engineers, product strategists and brands large and small want to know what the future will look like in order to make spending decisions.

Research firm Forrester took a deeper look at the mobile Web versus application debate and came to what some may find to be a startling conclusion: there is no debate at all. The mobile Web is not going to die and app stores are not going anywhere. As mobile usage increases worldwide, both sides of the equation will grow with it and become valuable aspects of product roadmaps.