Exactly how ginormous is Android?

Exactly how ginormous is Android?:
There is no denying that Android, Google’s operating system for mobile devices, is big. For example, Android is the OS on 42% of all consumer compute devices.
We have scoured the web for data that will help us show exactly how big Android is in the smartphone world. And in every way we looked at it, Android is ginormous.

Smartphone web traffic

In terms of smartphone web traffic, Android leads the way, but perhaps not in the same crushing way as in other areas.
Web traffic is interesting, because it gives us an indication of the actual use of smartphones. Looking at the past four years, Android is the only mobile OS that has been constantly growing in use. Currently, Android’s share of smartphone web traffic stands at 37%.

For the last year, it looks as this is going to be a two-horse race between Android and iOS. All the other mobile operation systems seem do be doomed to a slow death, getting used less and less.

Market shares in the top 5 Android and iOS markets

In terms of sales, the two biggest markets for Android and iOS devices are China and the USA. The leading OS in both these markets is Android. In fact, the same is true for all five top Android and iOS markets.

Android’s progress in China does not get any less impressive when you consider that China recently passed the USA as the biggest market for Android and iOS devices.

Android outpaces growing smartphone market

In just a year, from Q4 2011 to Q4 2012, the worldwide smartphone market grew by almost 40%. However, Android in the same time period, grew by an amazing 88%.

Here are some other numbers worth noting:

• For Q4 2012, the worldwide market for smartphones was 208 million devices.
• Out of this, Android’s share was 144.7 million smartphones and iOS accounted for 43.5 million smartphones.
• Shipments of iOS smartphones increased by about 23%.
• For all other mobile operating systems, it looks bleak. Their combined share is down from 25% to 10%.

Largest smartphone manufacturer; it’s an Android brand

While there is only one manufacturer that uses iOS, there are several that use Android as the OS on their mobile devices. So even though there are more Android smartphones that ship, the biggest manufacturer could still be Apple. But it´s not, not even close.

Yes, it is true that Samsung also makes smartphones with other operating systems than Android. But according to recent numbers, 94% of all Samsung smartphones run on Android. That means 214 million units, still way ahead of Apple.

It’s an Android world

So far, everything has shown that Android rules the smartphone OS world. This doesn’t change if you look at the market share worldwide for smartphones. With a 65% market share of worldwide smartphone sales at the end of last year, Android dwarfs the 20% share that iOS had.

It will be very interesting to see these numbers at the end of 2013. Surely this growth can’t continue, or can it?

Android is up everywhere you look

Nothing in our data, and we mean nothing, indicates that Android is going to start losing ground in the smartphone market. Actually, everything points in the other direction, it is up everywhere you look.
What will be interesting to see during 2013 is what will happen to Windows Phone and BlackBerry. Will they at least make the smartphone market a bit more interesting, and not just a big Android show with the iOS sidekick?

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Internet Explorer continues growth past 55% market share thanks to IE9 and IE10, as Chrome hits 17-month low

Internet Explorer continues growth past 55% market share thanks to IE9 and IE10, as Chrome hits 17-month low:
Last month we said 2013 wouldn’t disappoint in the battle of the top three browsers, and boy were we right. February was the fourth full month of IE10 availability as well as when new versions of competing browsers launched in the same week: Firefox 19 and Chrome 25. The latest market share numbers from Net Applications show that Chrome is so far still the only loser in 2013.
Between January and February, Internet Explorer gained 0.68 percentage points (from 55.14 percent to 55.82 percent) and Firefox was up 0.18 percentage points (from 19.94 percent to 20.12 percent). Chrome meanwhile fell a huge 1.21 percentage points (from 17.48 percent to 16.27 percent). Safari was up 0.18 percentage points to 5.42 percent and Opera picked up 0.10 percentage points to grab 0.55 percent.

At 55.82 percent, Internet Explorer is still growing. January was the first time the browser went back above the 55 mark in a long time, and February showed it won’t be losing that crown just yet. Despite Windows 8′s release and gains, however, IE10 continues to have a hard time pushing things forward.
At 1.58 percent in January, the browser gained just 0.29 percentage points last month while IE9 recovered after its first loss in January, propelling to 21.67 percent (down by 0.74 percent percentage points). There is some good news for IE10 though, it’s available for Windows 7 now, so we should see some accelerated growth in the coming months.
IE8 lost 0.16 percentage points, but it’s still the world’s most popular browser at 23.38 percent. IE7 was down 0.12 percentage points and IE6 fell a nice 0.36 percentage points. Everyone can’t wait for it to fall below the 5 percent mark, but that won’t happen till sometime later this year (and China is delaying things).

At 20.12 percent, Firefox continues to hover at the one-fifth-of-the-market mark. Firefox 19 managed to grab 3.32 percentage points, which naturally would have been higher if the browser was available for a full month. Firefox 18 grabbed 2.77 percentage points, while all the older versions lost share: Firefox 17 fell 5.00 percentage points, Firefox 16 was down 0.26 percentage points, and Firefox 15 lost 0.07 percentage points.

At 16.27 percent, Chrome took a serious beating in February. We haven’t seen the browser at the 16 percent mark since September 2011. Late last year, it saw three months of losses in a row, and now it’s two for three again after its losses in January. Nevertheless, Chrome 25 grabbed 3.14 percentage points, while Chrome 24 grabbed 2.18 percentage points. Chrome 23 was down 6.13 percentage points and Chrome 22 fell 0.12 percentage points.
As we already mentioned, new versions of Firefox and Chrome were released two days apart this month. Thanks to Mozilla’s and Google’s automatic updating systems, the majority of their respective users will be on Firefox 19 and Chrome 25 by the end of March.
While we’ve been waiting for Chrome to pass Firefox for a while now, it’s becoming less and less likely. February seems to be just a blip, though this is just speculation right now. IE9 will soon pass IE8, taking the crown as the world’s most popular browser version, and hopefully IE10 will pass IE7 and IE6.
Net Applications uses data captured from 160 million unique visitors each month. The service monitors some 40,000 Web sites for its clients. StatCounter is another popular service for watching market share moves; the company looks at 15 billion page views. To us, it makes more sense to keep track of users than page views.
Nevertheless, for Februar 2013, StatCounter listed Chrome as first with 37.09 percent market share, IE in second with 29.82 percent, Firefox in third with 21.34 percent, Safari with 8.60 percent, and Opera with 1.22 percent. The only part everyone agrees on is that Safari and Opera are not in the top three.
See also – Windows 8 now up to 2.79% market share as Windows 7 stabilizes after its first decline
Image credit: Hugo Humberto Plácido da Silva

comScore: Apple increases lead as top US smartphone maker while Samsung gains; Android and iOS fortify duopoly

comScore: Apple increases lead as top US smartphone maker while Samsung gains; Android and iOS fortify duopoly:
Apple may not be king when it comes to smartphones around the world, but at home it ended 2012 as the top OEM. In the US, Apple is increasing its share in first place and Samsung is slowly gaining on it in second. Rounding out the top five are HTC, Motorola, and LG.
The story is similar in the platform space, although slightly reversed: Google is first courtesy of Android, Apple is second with iOS, but the latter is gaining on the former. Again, rounding out the top five are BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Symbian.
The latest data comes from comScore, which as usual surveyed over 30,000 mobile subscribers in the US (although it limited its results to smartphones this time, for some reason). The analytics firm says 125.9 Americans owned smartphones (54 percent mobile market penetration) in December, up 5 percent since September.
Between those two months, here is how the top five smartphones OEMs have fared:

As you can see, Apple gained 2.0 percentage points in terms of smartphone subscribers (from 34.3 percent to 36.3 percent) while Samsung jumped 2.3 percentage points (from 18.7 percent to 21.0 percent). HTC fell 1.8 percentage points (from 12.0 percent to 10.2 percent), Motorola dropped 0.7 percentage points (from 9.8 percent to 9.1 percent), and LG managed to gain 0.7 percentage points (from 6.6 percent to 7.1 percent).
Samsung and Apple gained a combined 4.3 percentage points while the other three lost 2.0 percentage points together. In other words, the duo is even stealing share from OEMs not in the top five.
It appears that the iPhone 5 is helping keep Apple ahead, but Samsung isn’t really affected. Meanwhile, we can attribute LG’s gains to Google marketing the Nexus 4, although sales have been limited by supply issues.
Meanwhile, on the software side, Google is dominating and Apple is moving ahead in second place. Everyone else is losing share or has already become irrelevant (take your pick):

Samsung may be slowly gaining on Apple in the smartphone space, but iOS is growing faster overall when compared to Android, at least in this snapshot. Google gained 0.9 percentage points between September and December (up from 52.5 percent to 53.4 percent) to further pull ahead in first place. Apple increased its share by 2.0 percentage points (moving from 34.3 percent to 36.3 percent).
Meanwhile, BlackBerry is down 2.0 percentage points (from 8.4 percent to 6.4 percent), Microsoft lost 0.7 percentage points (from 3.6 percent to 2.9 percent), and Symbian seems to have stagnated at 0.6 percent. Naturally, we’ll be looking closely to see if BlackBerry can recover in the coming months with its BlackBerry 10 launch, though it will be very difficult as the company continues to be the biggest loser in these studies, month after month.
Again looking at the winners and losers, Google and Apple gained a combined 2.9 percentage points, while the other three lost 2.7 percent. The duopoly is even stealing from other smartphone OS makers as Americans seem to be perfectly happy to choose between the two camps.
Image credit: Jung Yeon-Je/Getty Images

China to hit 246m Android and iOS devices this month, taking it past the US to become world’s largest market

China to hit 246m Android and iOS devices this month, taking it past the US to become world’s largest market:
This month, China is slated to pass the US to become the world’s top country for active Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. In January 2013, China and the US had roughly the same active device installed base: 221 million and 222 million, respectively. By the end of February 2013, China will have an estimated 246 million devices compared to 230 million in the US.
The findings come from Flurry, which tracks over 2.4 billion anonymous app sessions per day across more than 275,000 apps around the world, and says it can reliably measure activity across more than 90 percent of the world’s smartphones and tablets. Based on historical growth trends as well as the number of detected devices per country through the first of this month, the company estimated its numbers for the end of this month.
Here’s the historic data with the projection in graph form:

If China really does claim gold from the US in February, it will be exactly 12 months since Flurry reported that the country had become the world’s fastest growing market for smartphones and tablets. The company unsurprisingly doesn’t expect the US to take back the lead from China, citing the countries’ populations: just over 310 million versus over 1.3 billion, respectively.
The only country that could feasibly take that spot is India, which has a population of just over 1.2 billion. Yet it is currently in 10th place with 19 million smartphones and tablets, according to Flurry:

Interestingly, both the US and China have more than five times the active installed base than that of the UK, the world’s third largest market. Furthermore, both countries continue to see rapid device adoption.
China may no longer lead the world in growth, but it still commanded an impressive 209 percent rate on top of a base of 71 million devices from January 2012. The below chart excludes countries with less than half a million devices as of January 2012:

Only Columbia, Vietnam, Turkey, Ukraine, and Egypt grew faster than China. Year-over-year, compared to January 2012, the US added 55 million new devices, while China added 150 million new devices. Flurry says China would have passed the US earlier, given its growth rate, but the American holiday season delayed the inevitable for an additional two months.
See also – Duopoly: 98% of Q4 smartphone shipments in China were powered by Android or iOS, at 86% and 12% respectively and Despite the iPhone’s monumental Q4, Android still powered 50% of all smartphones sold
Image credit: Gary Tamin