Apple Rules The Phone And Tablet Browsing Market

By | September 3, 2011 | 5 Comments

Apple Rules The Phone And Tablet Browsing MarketMobile browsing has more than doubled in the last year and now accounts for over 6% of all online activity, a Web statistics company said today.

Apple’s Safari, the default browser on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, rules the usage share roost, representing 53% of the mobile browsing market.

Two trends are clear. Phones and tablets are stealing browsing share from desktops at an accelerated pace. - Vince Vizzaccaro, a vice president with metrics firm Net Applications

Users still do nearly all of the their browsing from a desktop or notebook computer, Net Applications’ numbers showed, but that’s changing: A year ago, desktop browsing controlled a 97.2% share, compared to 93.2% in August.

The other trend is Apple’s obvious advantage. In the last 12 months, Safari’s share has increased by 9.3 percentage points, and now owns a majority of the smartphone and tablet browsing market. The clear loser has been Opera Mini, which lost 12.5 points in the same period, reducing its share to 20.8%.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad account for the bulk of Safari’s share, although the former, which has a nearly three-year lead on the latter, remained slightly ahead last month. According to Net Applications, 27.4% of all mobile browsing was done from an iPhone, while 22.5% was conducted on an iPad.


About (Author Profile)


Being passionate about software, Armin joined FavBrowser.com in early 2011 and has been actively writing ever since. Having accepted the challenge, he also enjoys watching anime, indulging in good books, staying fit and healthy, and trying new things.

  • http://twitter.com/Alan_Kaholic Alan_Kaholic

    Hardly suprising, on Apple products that are chained to iTunes, Apple don’t allow you to install other browsers.  

    Indecently, Didn’t Microsoft get like a billion dollar fine for doing the same thing a fea years back (hellbent on destroying Netscape by making IE so integrated with Windows, that users were forced to use it?)

    I wonder how long before Apple are heading to the same legal battles?

    • MacroPheliac

      Actually Alan, you’re wrong. There are alternative browsers on iOS devices, Skyfire has been on the iOS marketplace since December of 2010, and Opera, even longer.

      However, unlike IE to Windows, the default browser Apple packages with their product is actually quite good, people use it because they want to, and really is the best the platform has to offer.

      • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

        Skyfire doesn’t have its own rendering engine running on the device.
        You’re being an Apple fan saying Safari is better than anything out there…

        • MacroPheliac

          The article was about browser marketshare, Skyfire will still identify with a different browser tag, inspite of the rendering engine.

          • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

            But it’s just a Mobile Safari fork, what means no treat for Apple-WebKit individual plans for the [mobile] Web! I mean: Apple doesn’t allow alternative browsers on iOS devices. Accept it, they play dirty.

            And about packaging their own software on their own software, (or third-party software like others do), I have nothing against it. Just pointing that saying “but the packaged product is good” isn’t a valid argument for people who doesn’t like this kind of distribution. I’d say they have the option to do not install.

«
»