Apple's iPhone was the only smartphone to gain mobile web traffic share in North America during the holidays, according to a new report from analytics firm Chitika, suggesting that the iPhone 5s and the iPhone 5c were popular with consumers over the holiday season.
The iPhone saw a 1.8 percent jump in web traffic from the period between December 20 and December 29, while other smartphone manufacturers experienced no gains or a slight loss in traffic share. Overall, the iPhone has a 54.3 percent share of total mobile web traffic, far above its closest competitor Samsung, which has a 23.7 percent share.
Despite its minor share loss, the iPad remains the most popular tablet, comprising 76.1 percent of all mobile web traffic in North America. Apple's closest competitor, Amazon, has a 9.4 percent share, while Microsoft and Samsung come in at 2.3 and 5.9 percent.
Mobile web traffic usage numbers have changed little over the course of the last year, with iOS devices continuing to dominate Android devices. In a report from late 2012, Chitika noted that iOS had an overall usage share of 67 percent, while Android had a 33 percent share.
Apple's mobile web traffic dominance was also confirmed by a recent report from IBM, indicating the majority of online shopping from mobile devices during the Christmas holiday was done by iOS users rather than Android users. 23 percent of total online sales on Christmas in the U.S. were made from iOS devices, while just 4.6 percent were made from Android devices.
To gather its data, Chitika used its Chitika network ad impressions, analyzing data from millions of smartphone and tablet users in both the United States and Canada. An ad impression was measured each time an individual user loaded a page containing Chitika ad code, giving an impression of overall web usage rather than a measurement of unique users.
Top Rated Comments
Have you ever done anything on an Android device? Most web browsers are a pain to use, with terrible zoom and laggy scrolling. I usually try to find a dedicated app for everything to avoid using the web browser.
iOS devices are a treat to use, so just "doing stuff" is in itself a reward.
SOME people buy Android as a top-end smartphone but many just get them because the phone on some cheap deal just happened to be Android.
With Tablets it's even worse: 'Wow, I got this Android tablet - it was so much cheaper than iPad!'. Five minutes later it's shoved in the junk drawer while people are using their iPads to death.
It means the vast majority of people messing around the internet with their mobile phones are doing so on Apple hardware.
And the significance? I guess it means if you're on an Android phone, you're not using the internet all that much. I have no idea why.
Have you? Chrome on Android is about as flawless a mobile browser as you could ask for.
As to your last comment... wow.
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Has anyone said this in reality or do we just regurgitate what we read on fan sites? Anyone I have ever known who has used a Nexus tablet device has been nothing but completely satisfied with it.
Seeing the numbers are based on ad impressions, I wonder how much
of an impact the availability of ad blocking plugins (e.g Adblock Plus)
on Android devices running Chrome has on the numbers.