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. ============================== ==============================