iPhone's Safari already the No. 1 US mobile browser, says firm

[AppleInsider]

The mobile version of Safari packaged as standard on each iPhone has already scaled the charts to emerge as the No. 2 mobile web browser in the UK and the No. 1 mobile web browser in the US, according to a new report.

Ireland-based StatCounter, which claims to track in excess of nine billion pageloads each month over its network of two million websites, says the Apple handset took 0.06 percent of the overall browser market in the UK thus far in March, behind Nokia's 0.15 percent.

Still, that's reported to be more than three times the mobile browser market share of rival Research in Motion, whose Blackberry garnered just a 0.02 percent share in the UK, and SonyEricsson which registered a 0.01 percent share.

Combined, the iPhone and iPod touch accounted for just shy of 0.10 percent of of the UK browser market, the firm noted.

Meanwhile, the two touch-screen handhelds helped Apple increase its share of the US mobile browser market by 64 percent since December, with the mobile version of Safari seeing its share rise from 0.14 percent to 0.23 percent during that time.

“The key message is that iPhone is more than living up to its claims of being a user friendly Internet browser, unlike many other cell phones,” said StatCounter founder Aodhan Cullen, who added that iPhone-based web browsing peaked in the US on Christmas Day at 0.7 percent (Note: may be inaccurate, was reported as "0.07 percent").

“Presumably this was due to people trying out their new Christmas present combined perhaps with not accessing their PCs that day," he said.

Excluding the iPod touch, the iPhone's share of the US browser market came in at 0.18 percent, handily dwarfing Nokia's approximate 0.01 percent share. However, StatCounter noted that Nokia still maintains a significant lead over Apple in the global market with 0.25 percent compared to the iPhone maker's 0.08 percent share.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[fARGINaPPLES]

I would like to see "Tabs" as a part of the Mobile Safari. I'm not quite sure that i like having to go to a separate screen to see all the open webpages I have, and then having to choose the one i want. I think tabs would be an excellent addition and would save time.

[mh71]

[QUOTE=AppleInsider;1231045] Ireland-based StatCounter, ..., says the Apple handset took 0.06 percent of the overall browser market in the UK thus far in March, behind Nokia's 0.15 percent.

...

Combined, the iPhone and iPod touch accounted for just shy of 1 percent of of the UK browser market, the firm noted.

[QUOTE]

Are they saying that the iPod Touch accounts for .94 percent of the browser market?

Hard to believe, to say the least.

[Kasper]

[QUOTE=mh71;1231057][QUOTE=AppleInsider;1231045] Ireland-based StatCounter, ..., says the Apple handset took 0.06 percent of the overall browser market in the UK thus far in March, behind Nokia's 0.15 percent.

...

Combined, the iPhone and iPod touch accounted for just shy of 1 percent of of the UK browser market, the firm noted.

Are they saying that the iPod Touch accounts for .94 percent of the browser market?

Hard to believe, to say the least.

No. I believe it was meant to say 0.10%. In general, this firm put out a pretty sloppy pair of stat releases. It seems they misplaced their decimal points in multiple instances. Kind of frustrating given they are overseas and closed right now.

best,

K

[Booga]

[QUOTE=Kasper;1231064][QUOTE=mh71;1231057]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Ireland-based StatCounter, ..., says the Apple handset took 0.06 percent of the overall browser market in the UK thus far in March, behind Nokia's 0.15 percent.

...

Combined, the iPhone and iPod touch accounted for just shy of 1 percent of of the UK browser market, the firm noted.



No. I believe it was meant to say 0.10%. In general, this firm put out a pretty sloppy pair of stat releases. It seems they misplaced their decimal points in multiple instances. Kind of frustrating given they are overseas and closed right now.

best,

K

Agreed with the n00b decimal point errors, but at least they started separating out Touch vs. iPhone numbers, which are interesting. I'm not aware that too many of these shops even understand the iPod Touch exists.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by fARGINaPPLES

I would like to see "Tabs" as a part of the Mobile Safari. I'm not quite sure that i like having to go to a separate screen to see all the open webpages I have, and then having to choose the one i want. I think tabs would be an excellent addition and would save time.

That will be touch with the current iteration as even the address bar goes away when you are not at teh very top of the page. I think the current option for multiple pages is excellent.

If you want a web browser that has permanent tabs at the top (though room would only limit it 3 or 4) you can make your own with the SDK.



PS: What is with all the sloppy quoting going on?

[stokessd]

I'm sitting here reading this on my phone... Just trying to help out. Its no wonder that the iPhone is number one; have you ever tried to actually surf on another smartphone?! (I'm talking US one here, not a sweet euro or Asian one) its like being the validictorian of summer school.


Sheldon

[winterspan]

Originally Posted by fARGINaPPLES

I would like to see "Tabs" as a part of the Mobile Safari. I'm not quite sure that i like having to go to a separate screen to see all the open webpages I have, and then having to choose the one i want. I think tabs would be an excellent addition and would save time.

How would you accomplish that? The screen is pretty small as is, but I like the way the address bar disappears by default. That was a brilliant idea. Maybe you could put three or four tabs below the address bar and have both of them disappear by default (ie scroll the page down by default)?

Originally Posted by stokessd

I'm sitting here reading this on my phone... Just trying to help out. Its no wonder that the iPhone is number one; have you ever tried to actually surf on another smartphone?! (I'm talking US one here, not a sweet euro or Asian one) its like being the validictorian of summer school.
Sheldon

You know, it seems like Europe isn't all that special anymore, with alot of their phones or variants of them being available in the USA now.
In Japan, despite the fact that nearly every phone is a flip phone with only a keypad/no qwerty (must have something to do with Japanese text entry), their screens are large and they've had VGA 640x480 and higher screens for years now. I hope in the next 3G iPod that they are able to make the interface resolution independent, so they can make it 640x480 without making development more complicated for supporting two screens.

The other problem I see with a high-res IPhone is that the 3d graphics capabilites would be different unless the high-res iPhone had a better graphics chip.
Think of developing a game and optimizing it so it has the most polygons and highest quality textures while still running at 30fps. a higher resolution iPhone would take more graphics power to run the display at the same framerate, and so unless it had a proportionally more powerful graphics chip, developers would have to have the app recognize what iPhone model it is and change graphics settings accordingly.

Anyone have an input on how they have dealt with this in the past on other platforms?

[aegisdesign]

Originally Posted by Kasper

No. I believe it was meant to say 0.10%. In general, this firm put out a pretty sloppy pair of stat releases. It seems they misplaced their decimal points in multiple instances. Kind of frustrating given they are overseas and closed right now.

I find it very hard to take them seriously when a) we're talking about tenths and hundredths of a percent and b) it's a company who relies on cheesy website based stats counters that no self respecting website developer would install.

A big problem with the stats is that the user agent string isn't so different from Safari on a Mac or Windows. eg. for a Nokia phone, their browser returns...

Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/109 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/109

That doesn't even identify itself as Nokia but so far all the Symbian Webkit based browsers have come from Nokia (I think). I'd suspect for many stats firms though that both the iPhone and Symbian's browsers are getting lost with Safari's and some of Safari's are getting lost with 'Gecko' based stats.