US Data: January 2014 to August 2014
This week we will look at how the price band of devices used for Web access has changed since January 2014. Data in this article represents aggregated device data in the US. Using the 51Degrees PriceBand property in Device Detection is beneficial for website analytics to gain significant understanding of visitors or clicks. Such data is especially useful when combined with other analytics data and used for the purposes of A/B testing. Prices are in USD at the moment of device release.
Mobile Devices
From the above graph it appears that there is a steady decline in the amount of devices accessing the Web that fall in 250.00 - 499.99 and 0-249.99 price bands. At the same time a larger percentage of more expensive devices (500 USD and up) are being used for Web access.
The above data represents grouped price bands. The following chart represents the changes in individual recorded price bands.
Tablets
Aside from data for July 2014, there appears to be a steady increase in the amount of devices used for Web access that fall under 400.00 - 699.99 and 700+ price bands. On the other hand there is a decrease in the amount of low-end Tablet devices used for Web access. This trend could suggest that either the low-end Tablets market is reaching saturation, or that consumers prefer more expensive devices. This is important as sales of Tablet PCs are expected to reach over 57 million units in US in 2015.
Conclusion
It appears that more expensive mobile devices are gaining in popularity. This is true for Tablets as well as the mobile device population in general; the graphs are based on aggregated data collected by 51Degrees about devices used for Web access.