Apple's Safari claims 55% of US mobile browser usage, 10.5% desktop share

Posted:
in iPhone edited April 2015
In March, 55 percent of U.S. mobile Web traffic stemmed from Apple's Safari, although the browser continued to lag behind in the desktop environment, analytics firm StatCounter said on Wednesday.




By comparison, Google's multi-platform Chrome accounted for 29.9 percent of mobile Web use, while generic Android traffic accounted for 9.5 percent. StatCounter tracks data for visits to more than 3 million websites.

Safari was also the mobile browser of choice in several other countries, such as Canada, Australia, France, the UK, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and Norway. Chrome held sway in a number of regions however, some prominent examples being Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Russia, and Spain. Much of Africa preferred Opera. The world's largest countries by population, India and China, favored UC Browser and Android, respectively.

Worldwide, Chrome led mobile traffic at 28.9 percent, though Safari was close behind at 27.6. Android was next closest at 18.1 percent.

Figures for U.S. desktop traffic showed Safari at just 10.5 percent. Chrome led with a 41.6 percent share, followed by Internet Explorer at 28.1 percent, and Firefox at 17.4 percent.

Chrome enjoyed even greater control of desktops worldwide, managing a 52.6 percent share. Internet Explorer came in a distant second with 19.7 percent, followed by Firefox at 18.6 percent. Safari ranked at just 5.4 percent, though ahead of Opera's 1.7.

StatCounter lastly drew attention to the search preferences of Safari users. In March, Google accounted for 83 percent of U.S. searches, and 87.9 percent worldwide. Equivalent Yahoo numbers were 11.5 and 8.3 percent, and Bing's portions were smaller still, only 4.7 and 2.5 percent. Figures for DuckDuckGo, the only other built-in search option for Apple's browser, were not broken out.
«1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 32
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    Considering Safari isn't on Windows anymore, 5% isn't bad WW. Neither is 10% in the US.
  • Reply 2 of 32
    52.6% of people enjoy selling themselves down the river to Mountain View. Shameful.
  • Reply 3 of 32
    schlackschlack Posts: 719member
    I imagine that apple is mostly interested in providing a compelling alternative to Chrome/IE on the desktop. It's the mobile browser that they really want to push/grow.
  • Reply 4 of 32
    jbdragonjbdragon Posts: 2,305member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post



    Considering Safari isn't on Windows anymore, 5% isn't bad WW. Neither is 10% in the US.

     

    Why would 5% of Windows users even be using Safari?  It's such a old crappy browser at this point.  Talking about being stuck and not changing your ways.   I'm using Chrome right now now this crappy old XP laptop because it's faster then anything else.   I just don't get why anyone would be using Safari on Windows.  There's lots of options on browsers that are being updated and worked on and supported.  

  • Reply 5 of 32
    ecatsecats Posts: 272member
    These figures only cast further down on Google's claimed market share for Android.
    The units might be out there, but they're not being used. (A pretty interesting tidbit considering that these devices would still be relatively new.)

    Google would have a very good picture of actual Android device usage, but they've never shared this, and it seems obvious why they don't.
  • Reply 6 of 32
    ecatsecats Posts: 272member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by JBDragon View Post

     

     

    Why would 5% of Windows users even be using Safari?  It's such a old crappy browser at this point.  Talking about being stuck and not changing your ways.   I'm using Chrome right now now this crappy old XP laptop because it's faster then anything else.   I just don't get why anyone would be using Safari on Windows.  There's lots of options on browsers that are being updated and worked on and supported.  




    I think you've misread the data. WW = worldwide, not windows. But yes, like you say, I doubt anyone uses Safari on Windows anymore, it's been out of production for years. Older systems tend to use Firefox as it's less demanding than Chrome.

  • Reply 7 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    ecats wrote: »
    These figures only cast further down on Google's claimed market share for Android.
    The units might be out there, but they're not being used. (A pretty interesting tidbit considering that these devices would still be relatively new.)

    Google would have a very good picture of actual Android device usage, but they've never shared this, and it seems obvious why they don't.
    This is what's important to Google:
    "StatCounter lastly drew attention to the search preferences of Safari users. In March, Google accounted for 83 percent of U.S. searches, and 87.9 percent worldwide. Equivalent Yahoo numbers were 11.5 and 8.3 percent, and Bing's portions were smaller still, only 4.7 and 2.5 percent. Figures for DuckDuckGo, the only other built-in search option for Apple's browser, were not broken out."

    There may be other default search providers in Safari but users would appear to overwhelmingly prefer and use Google Search.
  • Reply 8 of 32
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    Why doesn't this article have any year over year comparisons? Trends are an important part of the story! Get it together AI - you are a news organization, right?
  • Reply 9 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    ecats wrote: »
    These figures only cast further down on Google's claimed market share for Android.
    The units might be out there, but they're not being used. (A pretty interesting tidbit considering that these devices would still be relatively new.)

    Google would have a very good picture of actual Android device usage, but they've never shared this, and it seems obvious why they don't.
    Does Apple? Or Microsoft? The only thing I've seen is regurgitated numbers from outside analysts and trackers, not numbers sourced from the companies themselves.

    But you're wrong about Google. They do announce Android usage numbers whether you know it or not.
    http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/06/25/google-activations-io-2014/

    There's another Google I/O coming up and I would guess they'll announce updated numbers.
  • Reply 10 of 32
    freerangefreerange Posts: 1,597member
    ecats wrote: »
    These figures only cast further down on Google's claimed market share for Android.
    The units might be out there, but they're not being used. (A pretty interesting tidbit considering that these devices would still be relatively new.)

    Google would have a very good picture of actual Android device usage, but they've never shared this, and it seems obvious why they don't.

    This is because a large segment of android phones are super cheap crap that are used primarily / solely as feature phones - the users don't even know how to use the full features and / or have tiny or no data plans by taking the cheapest cellular package that is offered in their respective market. Outside the U.S. cellular providers offer many levels of plans, especially in the developing world, including China and India, which contain extremely limited messaging and data at the lowest level. This is one of the reasons that android's numbers are such a joke. There is no large all encompassing group called android that is unified in its usage and characteristics - it is highly fragmented in more than just the OS version being used.
  • Reply 11 of 32
    robin huberrobin huber Posts: 3,949member
    Google doesn't need me. I switched my iMac Safari default search to Yahoo a while back and am happy with it.
  • Reply 12 of 32
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    jungmark wrote: »
    Considering Safari isn't on Windows anymore, 5% isn't bad WW. Neither is 10% in the US.

    im still bummed about this. reader mode and reading list were awesome when working at my client's windows machines
  • Reply 13 of 32
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    ecats wrote: »

    I think you've misread the data. WW = worldwide, not windows. But yes, like you say, I doubt anyone uses Safari on Windows anymore, it's been out of production for years. Older systems tend to use Firefox as it's less demanding than Chrome.

    on my older windows workstation (Vista), after safari went kaput i went to firefox, but it was too slow..initial opening was and is sluggish, and work in iCloud was notably poorer than Chrome. so today its chrome there.
  • Reply 14 of 32
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    gatorguy wrote: »
    This is what's important to Google:
    "StatCounter lastly drew attention to the search preferences of Safari users. In March, Google accounted for 83 percent of U.S. searches, and 87.9 percent worldwide. Equivalent Yahoo numbers were 11.5 and 8.3 percent, and Bing's portions were smaller still, only 4.7 and 2.5 percent. Figures for DuckDuckGo, the only other built-in search option for Apple's browser, were not broken out."

    There may be other default search providers in Safari but users would appear to overwhelmingly prefer and use Google Search.

    ...and yet, ive never seen or interacted w/ an ad on mobile search. wonder how thats going to do for them...
  • Reply 15 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    nolamacguy wrote: »
    ...and yet, ive never seen or interacted w/ an ad on mobile search. wonder how thats going to do for them...
    No idea. They don't appear to hurt for money.
  • Reply 16 of 32
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member

    Chrome usage would be 0% if not for the fact that its slammed in your face if you use Google to search for anything.

  • Reply 17 of 32
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Quote:



    Originally Posted by ECats View Post



    These figures only cast further down on Google's claimed market share for Android.

    The units might be out there, but they're not being used. 

     

    This isn't really news. Only Fandroids are unaware of the reality that Android is purchased by people who don't know any better, and thusly don't even use the products (let alone buy anything from them).

     

    Unsurprisingly, there are a LOT of people who could not be less interested in buying a smartphone or tablet, and sure as hell are not going to buy an Apple product...so when they cave, its on some unknown-out-of-ten-thousand generic Android products...that finds a permanent home in the sock drawer.

  • Reply 18 of 32
    gatorguy wrote: »
    No idea. They don't appear to hurt for money.

    Explanation:
    You don't need to click on an ad for Google to make money. They made their money when the ad was placed. That is, the advertiser buys the ad. It's exactly the same model as junk mail: the advertiser pays the USPS to stuff your mailbox. Google sells ads using an auction, so advertisers compete with each other to outspend their competitors on shoving ads in your face, and Google makes a fortune off that.
  • Reply 19 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,176member
    Explanation:
    You don't need to click on an ad for Google to make money. They made their money when the ad was placed. That is, the advertiser buys the ad. It's exactly the same model as junk mail: the advertiser pays the USPS to stuff your mailbox. Google sells ads using an auction, so advertisers compete with each other to outspend their competitors on shoving ads in your face, and Google makes a fortune off that.
    Ah so that's how Apple's new plan for iAd works then too. Advertisers bid for access to "you". That makes sense. It's called an ad exchange isn't it?
    http://blog.adroll.com/adroll-selected-apple-iad-partner-helps-launch-new-programmatic-api
  • Reply 20 of 32
    nagrommenagromme Posts: 2,834member
    Safari share may catch up a bit on the desktop (er, laptop) now that Chrome has been revealed to be such a battery hog. (But I bet Google fixes that some day.)
Sign In or Register to comment.