Safari Dominates as Top Mobile Browser with 62% of Internet Traffic

According to the latest report from Net Applications (via All Things D), Apple's Safari continues to be the top mobile browser.

Safari for iOS was responsible for 61.79% of total mobile internet traffic during the month of March, an increase from 55.41% in February. Safari's closest competitor for mobile browser dominance was Google's Android browser, which had a 21.86% share of Web traffic in March.

safarimarketshare2013

Opera Mini came in third with 8.4%, Chrome registered 2.43%, and Microsoft Internet Explorer was the final major contender, with 1.99%.

Net Applications includes traffic from both smartphones and tablets, and the data that it collects comes from more than 160 million visits to 40,000 websites each month.

Top Rated Comments

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Jayomat

70 months ago

Well apple prohibits the implementation of other browsers, which makes every other browser a safari skin (basically)

Rating: 9 Votes

SockRolid

70 months ago

Ohhhh exciting!

/sarcasm

LOL. Because everyone is fascinated by... browserzzzzz...

zzz...

zzzzzz.....

ZZZZZZZZ . . . . . . . . .

Rating: 7 Votes

baryon

70 months ago

"Apple is getting boring and people are switching to Android, obviously"
"The lack of innovation is making Android a better option than the iPhone"

I'm not saying anything about the two major competitors, I just want to point out that Safari having such an advantage means that iOS devices are being used a lot more than Android devices, regardless of any sales figures, profits, market share, etc Which means, quite obviously, that iOS is not doing bad at all compared to everything out there. People still prefer browsing the web (which is the most significant thing you do on a smartphone/tablet) on iOS, for some reason

Rating: 5 Votes

eawmp1

70 months ago

I use Chrome for iOS, but like others said, I suspect there's a good chance reports itself as Safari?

I would suspect you are in a SMALL minority of iDevice users using an alternate browser. The average Joe is going to use the default Safari.

The data is impressive in that iDevice users generate more traffic per device than all other mobile devices COMBINED.

Rating: 5 Votes

Ryth

70 months ago

I use Chrome for iOS, but like others said, I suspect there's a good chance reports itself as Safari?

The point is you're still using an Apple device...not the others which are dominating Apple according to every new source out there.

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I don't find it impressive...I think that most of us that use logic and our brains know that Apple is the dominant device by a huge margin out there.

Only the fandroids and Samsung paid media are touting that Apple was doomed and loosing rapid market share.

Rating: 5 Votes

nagromme

70 months ago

Well apple prohibits the implementation of other browsers, which makes every other browser a safari skin (basically)

Meanwhile, both Chrome and the Android browser are also Webkit-based... even with no prohibition they seem to recognize that Apple's browser engine is the best!

I don't buy this.

People aren't buying phones just to have them, they buy them to use them.

I seriously question the legitimacy of this

Surprising, I agree--but it's an old surprise: data from every source has pointed in this same direction for ages. So why aren't Android users going online as much? I see at least three likely contributing factors--bearing in mind that we tech-savvy forum-goers are not the public at large:

1. People do NOT always buy Android phones to use them. A certain chunk of people take whatever free or cheap phone the carrier salesperson can push on them, with whatever data plan they can be talked into, and really don't know what they're getting or why. They proceed to keep making phone calls and not much else, which was all they ever did before.

2. Some Android phones are just awful. There are hundreds of them that are not well-known poster devices, just junk shoveled out the door with a free OS. My friend was excited to get a free smartphone with browser and email... but discovered that she hates it. She does use it anyway, but surprisingly little. Can't wait for an iPhone next time.

3. Even at its best, the Android experience as a whole is not as good as the iOS experience. Fewer apps, more malware, more mysterious battery drain, less careful UI, more confusion, more outdated software rather than receiving the latest OS version. And human nature means that if something doesn't work quite as well, you naturally won't use it quite as much. By analogy, compare two apps for the same phone--weather apps, say. One works better than the other; users of that app will use it more! Same applies to entire phones/OS's.

Rating: 5 Votes

Ted13

70 months ago

Queue all the "But, but but, Android users change their user agent to spoof Safari!" comments.

Again and again more proof that "shipment" and "activation" numbers are meaningless -- sales and usage is what actually counts. And curiously the profit share in mobile is quite close to the usage share...

Rating: 4 Votes

samcraig

70 months ago

Ohhhh exciting!

/sarcasm

Rating: 3 Votes

gatearray

70 months ago

I don't buy this.

People aren't buying [Android] phones just to have them, they buy them to use them.

I seriously question the legitimacy of this

of course they buy Android phones to use them, they make and receive phone calls and text messages. they just don't download apps or surf the web generally speaking, but many of us around here already knew that for quite some time.

Rating: 3 Votes

DigiSociety

70 months ago

iOS Chrome doesnt user agent

I use Chrome for iOS, but like others said, I suspect there's a good chance reports itself as Safari?

I took a quick look in Google Analytics and it does make a distinction between Mobile Safari and Chrome on iOS devices.