NEWS: iPhone surfs to mobile web domination

- J
- John Navas
  
  Contact options for registered users
posted
15 years ago

Mon, Mar 2, 2009 9:53 PM

The iPhone dominated the market for mobile web surfing last month, and there were relatively healthy showings from Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Mobile.

Net Applications found Apple's handheld status symbol accounted for 66.61 per cent of mobile traffic browsing the web during February.

The phone's nearest competitor was Microsoft's Windows Mobile, with 6.91 per cent of traffic.

Making a strong play was Google's Android, which tied with Symbian for third place with 6.15 per cent of traffic. While that's a long way behind the iPhone, it's not bad considering Android is just over a year old and Symbian has been in the market for longer.

It's the latest demonstration of the iPhone's pull. ...

[MORE]

- J
- Jeff Liebermann
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
15 years ago

Mon, Mar 2, 2009 11:16 PM

[Copied from my posting in ba.internet.]

No breakdown? Over what time period? My guess(tm) is that most of it is iTune downloads. I also can't tell if the percentages are a measure of traffic, number connections, connection time, or billing percentages. The only clue is the title on the 2nd URL which mentions "percentage of total USERS". So, what's a user? Probably a unique IP addresses, which cellular providers juggle with every connection.

Perhaps the not so minor detail that a data plan is MANDATORY with the iPhone might inspire iPHone users to do some expensive cellular web surfing. Meanwhile, the uptake for data plans for other handsets is currently minimal (I'll try to find the numbers but as recall, it's very low). Of course, that problem will soon be solved because Verizon and possibly other vendors are now requiring a data plan with their high end handsets. I expect their numbers to climb as non-iPhone users find something to do with their mandatory data plans.

- J
- John Navas
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
15 years ago

Thu, Mar 5, 2009 3:38 PM

On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:16:37 -0800, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

In watching iPhone users I'm seeing much more surfing than iTunes downloads.

Sure.

Yep.

Not necessarily -- Web ease of use on the iPhone is miles ahead of almost all other (not so) smartphones.

- J
- Jeff Liebermann
  
  Contact options for registered users
Vote on answer
posted
15 years ago

Fri, Mar 6, 2009 1:43 AM

Not miles ahead. Perhaps a few meters ahead. Navigation and Multi-touch page manipulation is really nice on the iPhone. It's really easy to move around from page to page. So much for the good part.

The bad part is that it takes two hands to do most everything. It would be much easier to just use a stylus, Getting rid of stylus was probably a design objective for the iPhone. No need for giant buttons with a stylus. Apparently other agree:

The lack of a keyboard seems to be an issue with the text messaging crowd. Yet another hack:

The glossy screen is cool looking. Comparing the iPhone with my XV6700 in bright sunlight was illuminating. My XV6700 was not brighter, but certainly more readable than the iPhone (due to glossy glare problems).