Latest Stats as at 19/12/2008.
These figures cover the 15-day period 1/12/2008 to 15/12/2008. 


Vista Market Share
==================

For period 1st to 15th December 2008, figures based on visits:-

XP 66.2 (was 66.7, 68.9, 69.9, 68.6, 69.2, 70.4, 71.6, 71.8)
Vista 19.6 (was 19.7, 18.0, 17.0, 17.9, 18.3, 17.5, 15.9, 15.8)
Other Windows 4.3 (was 4.2, 4.7, 4.7, 5.3, 4.5, 4.5, 4.0, 4.5, 5.6)
Mac 7.6 (was 7.3, 6.6, 6.6, 6.6, 6.1, 6.0, 6.3, 5.8)
Linux 0.9 (was 1.1, 1.1, 1.2, 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.4) 
Others 1.3 (was 1.1, 0.7, 0.8, 0.7, 0.7, 0.4, 0.7, 0.6)

The figure for Linux does not include a few "heavy hitters" who 
are testing rather than browsing.  The results are being checked.

Problems this week with IE may well mean that some Christmas 
shoppers will buy a Mac instead of a Windows machine.  
Big companies like Dell, Acer and HP must be beside themselves.  
My experience last year was that people could be observed surfing 
the net with their new toys during January.

The "Others" category continues to increase with better counting. 
New models of smart phone are popping up almost every week.  
It dawned on me this week that the IP address used by a mobile 
phone is one provided by the phone company. 

DoCoMo was my first concern.  This brand covers mobile phones 
provided by the Japanese telco NTT and there were so many hits 
from one IP address that I thought it had to be a robot building 
a search engine for NTT.  Actually it's their mobile phones.  

Similarly the Mac iPhone hits come from only a handful of 
IP address ranges worldwide, and in Australia it's only available 
on a contract from Vodaphone.  The hits from iPhones are 
overwhelmingly aimed at the Bondi Beach Home Page (these stats 
cover several web sites) thus clearly flagging the area 
for any "miniature web page" experiments, and presumably pictures 
will be preferred over a lot of heavy reading.
 
 
Browser Breakup
===============

Percentages for the period 1st to 15th December...

IE 67.5 (was 68.7, 69.5, 69.4, 68.9, 69.9, 69.7, 70.5, 71.4)
FF 23.2 (was 22.3, 22.4, 22.6, 22.9, 22.3, 22.5, 21.7, 21.3)  
Safari 5.7 (was 5.6, 5.1, 5.0, 5.0, 4.8, 4.4, 4.8, 4.8)
Opera 0.8 (was 0.9, 0.8, 0.9, 0.9, 0.7, 0.9, 1.0, 1.1)
Chrome 1.1 (was 0.8, 0.8, 0.8, 0.9, 0.7, 0.8)
All Others 1.7 (was 1.6, 1.3, 1.4, 1.4, 1.7, 1.6, 1.9, 1.7)

IE is falling gradually, with Firefox and Safari increasing.


Search Engines Share
==================== 

Breakup of visits coming via search engines for December 1st to 15th.

Google 85.6 (was 86.9, 85.8, 86.3, 87.0, 86.4, 87.8, 87.2)
Yahoo 7.9 (was 7.6, 7.6, 8.1, 7.5, 7.8, 6.8, 7.3, 7.3, 8.0)
Microsoft 3.0 (was 2.7, 3.1, 2.5, 2.0, 2.3, 1.7, 2.0, 3.3, 2.6)
All others 3.6 (was 2.7, 3.4, 3.1, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 3.5, 5.0, 5.0)

Notice how three just brands have over 95% of the search market.
Yahoo and Microsoft tend to gloss over these figures, by including
their other services such as Hotmail and Yahoo Groups in their 
claims for market share.


Linux Distro Analysis
=====================

What a shame all the Linux distros have not identified themselves 
with correct agent strings.

By comparison all the smart mobile phones identify themselves exactly.


Custom Browsers
===============

Just out of interest, I have compared the figures from 
the last half of April 2007 with the current figures for the 
first half of December 2008.

In that time the usage of custom toolbars has increased markedly 
from about 25% to a bit over 35%.  Oddly though, 
the same four toolbars are still the top four placegetters.  
InfoPath has increased its lead,  MediaCenter is about the same, 
AppleWebKit has declined a little, and in fourth place FunWeb 
has declined a great deal.

The market seems to be consolidating into just a few Custom 
Browsers, with most of the lesser names falling behind.  
Big losers are AOL, Optus, ZangoToolbar and PeoplePal.  
Some gains for Google, MegaUpload and SkyBroadband.

As for FunWeb, there has been plenty of articles claiming it's 
little better than Spyware, and Alexa (another well known minor 
player) definitely "calls home" so they can compile the statistics 
seen at www.alexa.com.   The definition of "spyware" says it 
calls home without asking, and Alexa was meeting that definition.  
So does Windows of course, now proven to call home even when 
you switch off the automatic update feature.

Automatic updating sounds like a great idea, except that 
last month an AVG virus update quarantined a file needed to boot 
Windows into their "virus vault".  Anyone who updated their 
virus signatures, then scanned their PC and then shut down 
was unable to reboot.  Well done AVG.  

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