Four fifths of Internet access still comes from desktop devices, StatCounter

Life

10 July 2013

A report by Irish firm StatCounter analysing global trends in Web traffic has found that the desktop is still king when it comes to Internet access. The study used data from 3 million websites at a rate of 15 billion pageviews a month in 200 countries to identify browsers, operating systems, social network referrals and mobile Internet usage.

‘Non-mobile devices’ like PCs, notebooks and tablets accounted for 83.92% of Web traffic compared to 16.08% for mobile. Still, handheld devices were found to be gaining ground at a steady pace with connected devices like smartphones and media players increasing their share from 11.09% in June 2012.

Google Chrome was identified as the most popular desktop Web browser, with a 42.68% global share, followed by Internet Explorer (25.44%) and Firefox (20.01%). The stock browser bundled with Google’s Android OS had the largest mobile market share on 29.06%, followed by Safari on iPhone and iPod touch at 24.98%.

Google also dominated in search, accounting for 90.09% of desktop and 93.79% of mobile results.

Microsoft’s desktop dominance was confirmed as Windows 7 traffic accounted for 52.62% of non-mobile traffic, however Windows XP was the first runner p at 21.06%. Windows 8 just about passed Vista by .5% (5.94% versus 5.4%) and OS X scored 7.43%. In mobile, vanilla versions of the Android operating system topped the chart of 37.93% followed by iOS on 25.41% and Nokia’s series 40 on 13.43%. The dated Symbian OS scored 7.69%, almost half is share from 2012.

The spread of mobile operating systems, however, did not translate directly into traffic volume. Samsung was the single largest supplier of mobile Web traffic on 25.47% but was quickly followed by Apple on 25.09%. Nokia was a somewhat unlikely third in 21.96% before the market dips to single digits for Windows Phone and Blackberry OS.

Lastly, referrals from social networks were dominate by Facebook with its billion-strong membership accounting for 71.03% with Pinterest, Twitter, Stumbleupon and YouTube following that order.

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