Browser stats for Q4

It’s time for some browser stats, as always courtesy of StatCounter.

StatCounter has rolled out a major upgrade to its statistics. For the first time, tablets are now clearly separated from desktop. If you haven’t taken a look for a while, do so now.

This allows us to see that right now, of 20 website visits, 15 come from desktop, 4 from mobile, and 1 from tablet. Remember that these are global statistics; there are quite a few differences when we study individual countries.

Mobile

On the mobile side of things there was a spike in Opera Mini usage that quickly abated. StatCounter decided to declare this a valid spike; and to be honest it’s sometimes quite difficult to distinguish valid and invalid spikes.

In any case, the result is that over Q4 Opera won 3% market share to the detriment of Safari and Android, but I expect this share to fade in Q1. Nonetheless, Android, especially, has started its downward move, since more and more Android phones now use Chrome as their default browser.

This especially goes for Samsung’s Galaxy S4 and newer models, where a special Samsung version of Chrome is now the default browser. Unfortunately it’s not possible to say how much of Chrome’s current 6% market share comes from Samsung and how much from other sources. I wouldn’t be surprised if Samsung is responsible for the majority of hits.

IE wins a point, which is good news for Microsoft. Still, it languishes at 2%, which is bad news for Microsoft. Other than that not much changed.

Global mobile browser stats, quarterly
Browser Q4 2013 ch Q3 2013 ch Q2 2013
Android 26% -2 28% -2 30%
Safari 21% -2 23% -3 26%
Opera 19% +3 16% 0 16%
UC 11% 0 11% +2 9%
Nokia 7% 0 7% 0 7%
Chrome 6% +2 4% +1 3%
BlackBerry 3% 0 3% 0 3%
NetFront 2% 0 2% 0 2%
IE 2% +1 1% 0 1%
Other 3% -2 5% +2 3%
Volatility 6% 5%
Mobile 20% +3 17% +2 15%

Desktop

I re-calculated the desktop market shares, and the main victim is Safari. Where previously it held 9% of the desktop/tablet market, it turns out to hold only 5% of the pure desktop market. Since the Mac share of the market is 7.5% (global stats, remember!), that allows us to calculate that one out of three Mac users uses another browser.

Other than that the desktop market saw little change. It seems Chrome’s winning streak has ended, and it is now settled at slightly less than half the desktop market. Not bad for a browser that came out five years ago, but I don’t doubt Google hoped for more. But it seens IE and Firefox are now at their minimum, where their remaining users are core fans.

Global desktop browser stats, quarterly
Browser Q4 2013 ch Q3 2013 ch Q2 2013
Chrome 44% 0 44% +1 43%
IE 28% 0 28% -1 29%
Firefox 20% 0 20% -1 21%
Safari 5% 0 5% 0 5%
Opera 1% 0 1% 0 1%
Others 2% 0 2% +1 1%
Volatility 0 2%
Desktop 75% -3 78% -3 81%

Tablet

For the first time I can present tablet browser stats. Unsurprisingly, Safari has the lion’s share, but it is falling slightly, and I had expected more than 70% of the market. Still, the wave of cheap Android tablets is not to be denied. I think it’s safe to say that all non-Safari browsers in the table are on Android.

Not much is changing right now. Seven out of ten website hits from tablets are from iPads, three out of ten from Androids. Windows 8 and the smaller operating systems are hardly a blip on the radar yet. (To be fair, that could be because Windows 8 is counted as a desktop OS, even if it has a tablet form factor.)

Global tablet browser stats, quarterly
Browser Q4 2013 ch Q3 2013 ch Q2 2013
Safari 69% -1 70% -2 72%
Android 16% 0 16% +1 15%
Chrome 7% 0 7% 0 7%
Silk 3% 0 3% 0 3%
Opera 1% 0 1% 0 1%
Firefox 1% 0 1% 0 1%
Others 3% +1 2% +1 1%
Volatility 1% 2%
Tablet 5% 0 5% +1 4%

Bonus stat: device type per country

Mostly because I was curious, here are the device type market shares of the twelve countries I follow.

Unsurprisingly, developing nations like Nigeria and India have a very high mobile share, while all others stick to the desktop.

In no country do tablets have a higher share than mobile, and the country with the highest tablet share is my own. What surprises me most is the relatively low tablet share in the US; I assumed it would be roughly on a par with the UK and the Netherlands.

Food for thought.

Device types per country
Country Desktop Mobile Tablet
Worldwide 75% 20% 5%
Nigeria 16% 81% 3%
India 35% 64% 1%
Indonesia 58% 38% 4%
South Korea 72% 27% 1%
UK 75% 15% 10%
US 77% 16% 7%
Netherlands 75% 14% 11%
Mexico 81% 14% 5%
Brazil 89% 9% 2%
Egypt 86% 12% 2%
Poland 87% 11% 2%
China 90% 8% 2%

This is the blog of Peter-Paul Koch, web developer, consultant, and trainer. You can also follow him on Twitter or Mastodon.
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