Latest Stats as at 3/1/2013 ============================= These figures cover the 15-day period 16/12/2012 to 31/12/2012. First sightings of the WinPhone 8 - both Nokia and HTC models. Predictions for 2013:- * Windows will retain its ownership of the desktop, but Android will gain ground against Apple on mobiles. * WinPhone will earn a few percent of market share, but the topic to watch is HTC customers - they have to choose Android or Windows. All the lesser mobile operating systems like WebOS and Symbian are disappearing fast although Blackberry is hanging on. * Specialist Linux magazines in the UK will cease publication. * Last year Safari passed Internet Explorer, but this year Chrome will pass Safari. * By mid year the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) industry will either have died out or will have started paying lots of money to get search information from Google. * Remember that Google is not sacred although many challengers have come and gone. A lot of traffic is being referred from Facebook; any mentions in the media of Facebook having their own search engine should be noted. Google's latest tactic of featuring Youtube videos in the top search results may backfire. * Try to predict who will be the next MySpace. Alternatively new sensations just come out of nowhere. * Despite spending a billion on their network, Vodafone will continue to decline because their reputation is mud. I'm not joking - I had a Vodafone dongle which did not permit FTP access to the Internet. * Over-pricing for bandwidth by mobile operators and congestion on their networks may turn out to be good publicity for the NBN. Watch closely as both sides of politics try to campaign without mentioning the NBN. Keep in mind that future "mobile broadband" will be mainly local wi-fi and not the more expensive direct-to-tower mobile broadband. The same idea goes for mobile phone calls - we can't possibly be paying the same fortune for mobile phone calls in five years time. Operating System Market Share ============================== For the period 16th to 31st of December, these percentage figures are based on visits, with earlier figures in brackets:- Windows-7 32.1 (35.3, 36.3, 36.2, 35.8, 35.2, 33.8, 34.4) XP 14.2 (17.2, 16.0, 16.5, 17.2, 18.8, 18.2, 19.8, 23.2) Vista 4.5 (5.3, 5.3, 5.2, 5.1, 5.2, 5.2, 5.0, 5.1, 4.7) Pre-XP Windows 1.0 (1.0, 0.7, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.7, 0.6, 1.0) Windows-8 1.3 (0.8, 0.9, 0.3, 0.1) Mac 11.9 (12.4, 13.0, 12.5, 12.8, 12.8, 12.4, 12.6, 11.3) iPhone/iPad/iPod 24.7 (19.8, 20.5, 21.0, 21.1, 19.9, 21.1) Android 6.6 (4.8, 4.5, 4.6, 4.6, 4.2, 5.0, 3.9, 4.1, 3.5) WinPhone 0.3 (0.2) Other Mobiles 2.4 (2.3, 1.8, 2.4, 2.0, 2.5, 2.8, 3.2, 3.0) Linux 0.9 (0.9, 0.8, 0.8, 0.7, 0.7, 0.7, 0.7, 0.7, 0.8) This is the silly season with offices closed and everyone using their smartphones. Hence the figures above show a drop in Windows 7 and a leap in Apple and Android mobiles. Take all these figures with a grain of salt and check again in a couple of weeks. The total sample size above was 17629. Browser Breakup =============== Percentages of visits for the period 16th to 31st December 2012:- Safari 33.3 (28.6, 29.9, 30.2, 30.4, 29.2, 30.2, 29.2, 27.7) Chrome 27.2 (28.5, 27.5, 27.2, 26.4, 26.4, 24.0, 23.0, 23.7) IE 21.4 (25.2, 26.2, 26.8, 27.2, 27.9, 28.0, 30.0, 31.5) Firefox 13.6 (14.1, 12.8, 12.2, 12.8, 12.7, 13.7, 13.7, 13.2) Opera 2.5 (2.1, 2.1, 2.1, 1.8, 2.3, 2.5, 2.3, 2.1, 2.1, 2.3) All Others 2.1 (1.6, 1.5, 1.5, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8, 1.8, 1.7) Above, Safari is big because of Apple products. The sample size was 17699 visits by humans. Search Engines Share ==================== Percentage breakup of visits coming via search engines for December 16th to 31st, 2012:- Google 84.3 (89.9, 89.2, 89.4, 89.5, 90.9, 90.4, 90.5, 90.6) Yahoo 5.4 (4.0, 4.2, 3.9, 4.1, 3.4, 4.2, 4.0, 3.5, 4.7, 4.6) Bing 5.5 (2.7, 3.3, 3.5, 3.3, 2.8, 2.5, 2.9, 2.7, 3.2, 3.3) All others 4.7 (3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 2.9, 3.0, 2.7, 3.3, 3.3) These figures show a sudden drop in the result for Google. Without writing a long essay, there are three points:- * The Bondi Beach Home Page is currently number 2 in Google, normally it is number 1. * There is a lift in the actual number of searches from Yahoo and especially Bing. * Several other effects barely understood, and possibly caused merely by the Christmas break. The total number of searches in this sample was 10836, including 2272 of 9146 searches (25%) via Google where the search string was suppressed allegedly for privacy reasons. =============================== ============================