Windows, IE lose web share to Mac OS X, Linux, Safari, Firefox, iPhone

Stephen Withers
Monday, 02 June 2008 12:40

Your IT - Mobility

The iPhone's web share is still trending up, but the rate of growth has slowed noticeably in the last few months.

That's not really surprising given speculation about the arrival of a new model in June may have discouraged new buyers, and furthermore the original iPhone has been unavailable from the US and UK online Apple Stores in recent weeks.

It'll be interesting to see if there's a surge in use as measured by Net Applications following the (presumed) debut of the 2008 iPhone this month. 3G connectivity should make for an even more satisfying web experience, but usage could be limited if the new carriers don't follow AT&T's lead with "all you can eat" flat-rate data plans.

Net Applications figures are derived from data collected by the company's visitor statistics service for web site operators, and are based on around 160 million visitors per month. That's big enough to provide some credibility, but without knowing the mix of sites it's hard to say how much trust can be put in the exact percentages.

It could be that the nature of the sites involved may lead to some bias towards or against particular operating systems or browsers, for example if they do not render well on mobile browsers.

I've just looked at iTWire's records, and almost half the visits involve Firefox and less than one-third IE. We do carry a lot of open source related content, so that is believable. But while Safari is showing up with a 11 percent share which is within the realms of possibility, I can't believe that it's all coming from the well-obsolete version 1.2 when 3.x is so widely used - especially when it has risen from around seven percent since Safari 3.x arrived.