Mobile web browsing market shares
Some thoughts on the mobile browsing data NetApplications released yesterday:
- Total mobile and tablet browsing is up. From 3.88% of all web browsing last February to 7.67% now.
- Mobile browsing is still just in its infancy.
- There are a LOT of Java phones out there. It’s no treat to surf the web on a feature phone and to still reach 21% share tells us something about the vast amount of Java phones still in use.
- Android will eat up a good chunk of that Java-share. Cheap Androids are the new feature phones. And they are better “surfers” which will further increase mobile web browsing. I don’t know what happened there in October- November though. My guess is that Android will soon surpass Java for good.
- iOS accounts for 52% of the mobile + tablet web browsing. Evenly divided between the iPhone and the iPad (hey, what about the the iPod touch?). Considering that there are 145+ million iPhones out there and “only” 40 million iPads tells a little bit about what a powerful and comfortable web browsing tool the iPad really is. This is also promising for the tablet form factor as a whole. If the other vendors start nailing the browsing experience.
- The usage pattern between iPhones and Android phones are different, iPhone users browse the web way more. However, this is not (just) a matter of iOS vs Android, it’s more a matter of high-end vs low-end. The difference in usage pattern is bigger between a Samsung Galaxy S2 and a cheap Android with a small. low resolution screen than the difference between the usage pattern of a Samsung Galaxy S2 and an iPhone. Even though the iPhone probably comes out on top in that comparison as well. But the browser share numbers for the iPhone shows us that the iPhone has a very strong position within the high-end smartphone segment.
Source: NetApplications Graph: CNN/Fortune
