iPhone fever drives Apple's web site traffic

Stuart Corner
Friday, 13 July 2007 09:59

Your IT - Mobility

The number of visitors to Apple's web site grew 5.0 percent from April to May, the highest growth among the global top 10, as momentum built towards the June 29 launch of the much-hyped iPhone.

According to comScore's worldwide rankings of top web properties, "The fastest growing property in the top 10 most-visited sites was Apple, which saw total worldwide visitation grow by five percent...eBay and Amazon - ranked as the sixth and eight largest Internet properties respectively - both experienced gains of four percent from April to May."

Google continues to lead as the most popular property, reaching almost 70 percent of Internet users. Both Google and the second-leading property, Microsoft, increased their number of unique visitors by two percent from April to May. The top three properties each boasted more than 20 average visits per visitor in May: Google with 27, Microsoft with 23, and Yahoo! with 22. Apple was 10th in the ranking with 121.5 million unique visitors in May and an average of 15.7 visits per visitor.

Growth was much higher among less popular site. In the top 100 the fastest growing was retailer Ciao with a 31.0 percent increase in unique visitors to 29.6 million. According to comScore this was "brought about in large part by the occurrence of Mother's Day and the onset of the summer holiday season."

Results from the comScore World Metrix service show that there were 772 million people online worldwide in May (defined as those individuals age 15 or older who accessed the Internet from a home or work location), an increase from 766 million in April, representing a 16 percent penetration of the worldwide population of individuals age 15 or older.