Latest Stats as at 21/4/2011. ============================= These figures cover the 15-day period 1/4/2011 to 15/4/2011. ============================= =============================== Introduction ============ This month I have taken a close look at hits to the favicon.ico file. It provides the little icon you see next to the typed URL at the top of your browser. It's hard to believe, but there are several hundred visits every couple of weeks which consist of just a single hit to favicon.ico. That one hit is hardly a "visit" worth analysing any further. These visits have been removed from the results below. Furthermore the detection of surges has been improved somewhat. Surges are very interesting in that you get a snapshot of a group of PCs on the other side of the world, but they tend to bias the results for operating systems and browsers. Surges cause week-to-week and day-to-day traffic variations which are otherwise unexplained. The larger surges are not included in the figures below to avoid the bias. Operating System Market Share ============================== For the period 1st to 15th April 2011, these percentage figures are based on visits, with earlier figures in brackets:- XP 37.4 (39.2, 40.0, 38.9, 39.9, 39.3, 38.2 ,38.2, 41.7, 42.5) Windows-7 25.8 (26.9, 25.7, 24.8, 23.0, 22.5, 22.0, 22.6, 21.5) Vista 13.6 (13.2, 13.4, 13.6, 13.9, 15.5, 15.5, 15.9, 15.9, 16.6) Other Windows 1.9 (1.7, 1.7, 1.6, 1.8, 1.9, 2.3, 2.0, 2.4, 2.6) Mac 11.1 (10.4, 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.2, 10.6, 10.4, 10.6, 10.1) iPhone etc 5.5 (4.8, 5.1, 5.5, 5.4, 5.9, 6.3, 6.4, 4.2, 3.7) Android 1.0 (0.8, 0.8, earlier share was in Other Mobiles) Other Mobiles 2.9 (2.2, 2.3, 4.1, 4.4, 4.1, 4.2, 3.7, 2.7, 2.4) Linux 0.8 (0.8, 0.6, 0.8, 0.9, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 0.8) The "iPhone" result includes both iPads and iPods. There were 201 iPad and 90 iPod visits, compared with 673 iPhone visits. The Android visits were 169, ahead of the Blackberry on 133 visits and Nokia/Symbian on 94. Nokia has slumped somewhat. The market share of the various mobile phones fills numerous on-line columns and industry reports. The January 2011 Nielsen Group figures were: HTC (Android) 12%, Motorola (Android) 10%, Samsung (Android) 5%, Other Androids 2%, Apple 27%, Blackberry 27%, Windows Phones 10%, Web-OS (HP) 4% and Symbian 2%. These figures are for USA sales, and for smartphones only (not all mobile phones). Notice how USA consumers favour USA brands. Windows is far less popular in Europe and Symbian is larger; the Samsung Galaxy Android is much liked in Australia. A company called ComScore analyses web browsing and puts the Android share at 31% saying this share is at the expense of all other operating systems. My own figures for March 2011 show Android increasing, and especially at the expense of Symbian. Mobiles running Windows is under 1% and so is Web-OS. Due to small sample sizes, even the monthly figures are dubious and I am having problems with the definitions for any breakup. Firstly, are we measuring operating systems or manufacturers? Second, would you count the iPad and the iPod as smartphones? The total sample size above was 17650 visits by humans. Browser Breakup =============== Percentages of visits for the period 1st to 15th April 2011:- IE 49.1 (52.4, 49.5, 48.3, 48.0, 47.2, 48.9, 45.2, 52.1, 51.7) FF 20.5 (19.8, 20.6, 20.9, 22.4, 22.2, 21.1, 24.2, 22.2, 23.2) Safari 15.1 (13.9, 14.5, 14.6, 13.4, 14.2, 15.1, 14.7, 12.6) Chrome 11.7 (10.9, 11.5, 11.5, 10.5, 11.7, 10.5, 10.3, 9.5, 9.0) Opera 1.8 (1.4, 2.2, 2.3, 2.7, 2.1, 1.7, 2.0, 1.7, 2.0, 1.8) All Others 1.8 (1.6, 1.7, 2.3, 3.0, 2.6, 2.6, 3.5, 2.1, 1.8) Not much change to report and no new record highs or record lows. But keep an eye on Safari and Chrome. Firefox 4 was released on 22/3/2011 and this fortnight 820 visits were logged. Uptake now stands at roughly 22%. Mozilla have been crowing how successful they are, but I'm not so sure. If the upgrade is offered to all users, then a lot of people must be clicking on the "no" button, or perhaps a lot of people have installed Firefox but are rarely using it. The out-of-control Mozilla Foundation are planning to release Firefox 5, 6 and 7 within the next year. It's madness. Meanwhile Chrome, with their continual no-fanfare updates, has taken an 11% market share. Upgrade to IE-8 stands at 58%, but upgrade to the latest IE-9 is only 3%. I expect the fact that it's for Windows 7 only alters the landscape. The sample size was 18046 visits by humans. The Safari result includes iPhones. Search Engines Share ==================== Percentage breakup of visits coming via search engines for April 1st to 15th, 2011:- Google 89.5 (90.2, 91.4, 90.6, 89.7, 89.9, 89.8, 89.9) Bing 4.3 (4.1, 3.5, 3.2, 4.0, 4.3, 3.3, 3.2, 4.0, 3.8) Yahoo 3.2 (3.1, 2.7, 3.2, 3.4, 3.4, 3.6, 4.1, 4.0, 3.1) All others 2.9 (2.5, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9, 2.5, 3.3, 2.8, 2.9) Not much change since Christmas. The background images and the wacky sales pitch on Yahoo remain extremely annoying whilst every so often Google has these amazingly clever logos which are only seen for 24 hours. Less is more. The sample size above was 12170 searches. =============================== ===============================