Latest Stats as at 20/12/2010. ============================= These figures cover the 15-day period 1/12/2010 to 15/12/2010. ============================= =============================== Introduction ============ Android is big. It is currently bigger in America than here, so expect a boom here early in the new year. Two local computer magazines have long Android articles this month. Android has passed Blackberry and is now number two behind the iPhone. The mobile phone industry is moving incredibly fast; phones are being declared "discontinued" in just two years. Mobile phones are now 7% of the visits, and the struggle between the rival models is now much more interesting than the contest between different versions of Windows where a major shift to Windows-7 coupled with the demise of Vista now looks certain. The current share as I see it for the "installed base" of mobile phone operating systems is iPhones/iPads/iPods 63%, Android 10%, Blackberry 9%, Symbian/Nokia 9%, Windows 1% and all others 8%. Operating System Market Share ============================== For the period 1st to 15th December 2010, these percentage figures are based on visits, with earlier figures in brackets:- XP 41.7 (42.5, 43.1, 43.6, 44.7, 45.0, 45.0, 45.1, 46.2, 47.4, 46.3) Windows-7 21.5 (21.2, 19.8, 19.7, 19.5, 18.2, 18.1, 17.9, 16.4, 16.1) Vista 15.9 (16.6, 16.6, 17.0, 17.1, 17.1, 18.0, 18.3, 17.7, 17.5) Other Windows 2.4 (2.6, 2.7, 2.4, 2.5, 2.4, 2.3, 2.5, 2.4, 2.7, 2.9) Mac 10.6 (10.1, 10.7, 10.6, 10.0, 10.9, 10.4, 10.2, 11.2, 10.6, 11.0) iPhone etc 4.2 (3.7, 4.1, 3.3, 3.0, 3.4, 3.1, 2.8, 2.9, 2.5, 2.7, 2.1) Other Mobiles 2.7 (2.4, 2.2, 2.4, 2.2, 2.1, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 1.9) Linux 1.0 (1.0, 0.8, 0.9, 0.8, 0.9, 1.1, 1.1, 1.0, 1.0, 1.5, 1.0, 1.3) The "iPhone" result includes both iPods and iPads. There were 181 iPad and 94 iPod visits, compared with 580 iPhone visits. The Android operating system is installed on a wide range of mobile phones and in many cases the manufacturer's name is not given, only the model number. Code to count these models has been revised with the not-unexpected result that Android phones with 133 visits has just passed Blackberry on 125 visits as well as the Symbian operating system also on 125 visits. Depending on which commentator you read, Apple and the iPhone has or does not have a serious competitor with the Android. Apple has a very slick product but Google has opened the floodgates for all sorts of innovations and for programmers to quickly write new Apps (even if they barely work). Other than the Apple iPhone and Nokia's imminent Meego operating system, it seems pretty clear that all other smart phones will be Android flavours. It's hard to see the latest Windows mobile platform emerging as a winner. The total sample size was 20394 visits by humans. Browser Breakup =============== Percentages of visits for the period 1st to 15th December 2010:- IE 52.1 (51.7, 54.4, 54.3, 55.5, 55.0, 54.0, 53.2, 53.2, 52.9, 51.7) FF 22.2 (23.2, 20.6, 21.5, 21.5, 21.5, 22.4, 24.1, 23.5, 25.0, 25.3) Safari 12.6 (12.3, 12.9, 12.0, 11.6, 12.6, 11.5, 10.9, 11.9, 11.1) Chrome 9.5 (9.0, 8.8, 8.9, 8.3, 7.7, 8.2, 7.8, 7.4, 7.3, 8.1, 7.8) Opera 1.7 (2.0, 1.8, 1.8, 1.7, 1.7, 1.9, 2.0, 1.8, 1.7, 1.5, 1.6) All Others 2.1 (1.8, 1.4, 1.5, 1.5, 1.5, 2.1, 1.9, 2.2, 2.0, 1.9) A more typical result, compared with the previous surge to Firefox. Behind the scenes, the pressure is on browser builders to keep up with the latest technology. Looking to the near future, HTML5 will be big because it replaces a lot of proprietary add-ins and provides good features from which people can actually benefit. It will become increasingly difficult to surf the web happily with older browsers on older computers. It might be hard to believe, but MP3 will not be the lossy audio compression standard in five years time. However it's very likely that the word "MP3" will remain in popular use as the generic term for "compressed audio file", rather like doing some hoovering using any brand of vacuum cleaner. The sample size was 21059 visits by humans. Search Engines Share ==================== Percentage breakup of visits coming via search engines for December 1st to 15th, 2010:- Google 89.1 (90.7, 91.0, 88.4, 90.2, 90.5, 90.7, 91.2, 90.0, 90.1) Bing 4.0 (3.8, 4.2, 2.9, 2.9, 3.2, 2.6, 3.1, 2.9, 2.8, 3.0, 2.9) Yahoo 4.0 (3.1, 3.0, 3.3, 3.2, 3.3, 3.3, 3.4, 4.6, 4.5, 4.5, 3.9) All others 2.9 (2.4, 4.1, 3.7, 3.3, 2.8, 2.8, 2.3, 2.5, 2.9, 2.4) A slight drop for Google and a slight rise for Bing. A surge of interest for Yahoo, the best result for three months, but it's hard to believe they are having a revival. These figures are difficult to measure with accuracy. Once a breakup into "continents" is done, the same old trends are there. Yahoo remains popular in Asia at about 15%. Bing is popular in North America at about 15% but any surge or promotion there affects the global result. Outside North America and Asia, Google is 91% or better and, at 1% each, Yahoo and Bing are lost causes in continental Europe. The sample size above was 12975 searches. =============================== ================================ Trivia corner ============= There were three smaller surges of traffic to pictures this month, and these hits have been excluded from the figures given above for Operating Systems and Browsers. Surges in traffic usually do not involve searches, because people just click on a link direct to the page or picture. This month however, 156 people from the USA all searched for exactly the same thing, and all used the Bing Images search engine. Most unusual, since no instances of the same search came via Yahoo or Google. These 156 hits were removed from the search engine analysis, otherwise it would have moved the Bing result from 4.0% to 5.1%. In another small but important surge of traffic, 68 people mainly from the USA and all with similar models of Android phones all looked at the same scenic picture of Bondi Beach. I can only presume that someone sent out a newsletter to these mobile phone owners including the link to the Bondi Beach home page. The exact situation is not clear and again the numbers are very small, but including these visits would have put Android phones far ahead of the Blackberry. Christmas "down under". There are heaps of searches coming in for "christmas at bondi beach" etc etc from around the globe, although especially from England and from Australia itself. It seems the papers and TV stations are running the usual silly-season stories of "christmas on the beach". Where I stayed in England in 2006, they are currently having -1 to -11 as the daily temperature range. A merry christmas to all readers. ==================== ================= =======================