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The four device classes

I’ve been thinking a lot about device classes recently, and decided on a provisional four-class scheme. I have no idea if the scheme is going to survive, but we have to at least try to order the bewildering variety of devices somewhat.

While I was at it I also gathered data from StatCounter about the browsing shares of these device classes.

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The four device classes are:

• Desktop: traditional computers with a hardware keyboard and a non-touch screen. This includes laptops.
• Mobile: devices that fit in your pocket and have mobile connectivity.
• Tablet: devices that do not (easily) fit in your pocket and have a touchscreen but no hardware keyboard.
• Other: other devices. I admit that this is a bit of a cop-out. Right now it consists of the iPod Touch and Internet-enabled PlayStation and Nintendo devices. None of these fall in any of the other categories.

These four categories fall into three markets:

1. Mobile market: mobile. These devices are bought for their mobile connectivity.
   Devices on this market are subsidised by the mobile operators. Everybody needs a mobile device, even if they’re not interested in other kinds of devices or already own several of them.
2. Computing device market: desktop and tablet. These devices are bought for productivity and/or media consumption.
   It’s clear that tablets are becoming competitors to desktop computers. One purpose of this new line of research is figuring out how rapidly tablets are going to replace desktops for browsing purposes.
3. Other markets: other. These are devices that are bought primarily for a goal other than productivity or mobile connections. Examples include gaming consoles or music players. (OK, OK, this remains vague. People can easily buy both a gaming console and a music player.)

In general people buy a mobile device first, then a computing device, then one or more other devices. In the developing world, that usually means people only have a mobile device. Hence the immense change in browsing we’re witnessing.

The stats

With that said, here are the general browsing stats. I use hundredths of percentage points here because some shares are very low. I don’t really like doing that, because it suggests a precisions that StatCounter’s figures do not have, and I’m going to change my methodology later on.

Interestingly, it turns out that the growth of mobile browsing has collapsed in Q4. Where earlier mobile browsing grew with over a percentage point per quarter, in Q4 it grew very little. Let’s see if this is a trend or an outlier before we comment on it.

As to tablets, its rate of growth is itself growing. That’s nothing surprising: the tablet market is growing vigorously, and that is reflected in its browsing shares.

Tablet browsers

Which browsers do tablet users use? Nobody will be particularly surprised to hear that Safari for iPad leads with an immense percentage. Its share is going down, but that’s only because it has very little room to go up.

Keep in mind that we’re using very small numbers here, especially for BlackBerry. If the total share of tablet grows, I expect these numbers to starts to fluctuate.

StatCounter reports slightly less Android browsers than Android OSs. I assume most of these non-default Android browsers to be Opera. The Safari/iOS numbers match perfectly, so very, very few iPad users use a non-default browser.

Classes in 12 countries

Here are the four device classes in my twelve countries. The table clearly shows rather large differences between these countries. Unsurprisingly, developing countries have a high mobile share and a low share of the other three classes.

Findings:

• The highest-scoring country when it comes to tablets is the Netherlands. Yay!
• Tablets score surprisingly well in Nigeria: close to 1% of all devices. That’s a lot for a developing country.
• Tablets score surprisingly lousy in South Korea: it seems Koreans are not taken with the concept.
• Of course the iPad takes 75-95% of the tablet market. I expected this to be different in South Korea due to the Samsung Galaxy being a local product, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case.
• The bulk of the Other category is made up of the iPod Touch, as one would expect. The only exception is the UK, where the iPod Touch takes only about 40% of the Other category.
• Mexico scores very well in Other. That’s mainly due to the iPod Touch, which is used as much as the iPhone. In other countries iPod use is well below iPhone use.

Methodology

• StatCounter gives desktop and mobile stats, and also states the share of these two classes.
• Other: desktop PlayStation or Nintendo browsers, as well as mobile iPod Touch and Sony PSP browsers. I took this data from the desktop and mobile browser stats.
• Tablet: “desktop” devices running on iOS, Android, or BlackBerry. I took this data from the desktop OS stats.
• Mobile: all mobile devices that are not Other.
• Desktop: all desktop devices that ar not Tablet or Other.
• For the tablet browsers I compared the desktop OS (iOS, Android, BB) to the desktop browsers (Safari iPad, Android, BB). Any difference between the two was assigned to Opera (and other).