Analysts have been eagerly waiting for the latest mobile web browser market share data from NetApplications. Apple’s Safari continues to own the top spot by capturing 61.79% of all mobile browser web traffic as of March 2013. After having one of its lowest ratings after more than a year with 55.41% last February, Safari continues to be the king of mobile web browsers.
Running at second for 17 months now is Google’s Android browser at 21.86% market share. This is not a promising figure considering Android’s advantage in smartphone sales worldwide. Trailing behind them is Opera Mini with 8.4% and Google Chrome and Microsoft’ Internet Explorer at 2.43% and 1.99% respectively occupy the 4th and 5th place.
Safari has a huge lead with more than triple the next competitor. Experts predict that the lead is likely to continue for at least the remainder of the year.
Many observers are curious why Safari still manages to generate more traffic than Android even with the latter’s greater share of the smartphone market.
Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster offers three probable reasons:
“First, iOS continues to lead as the most popular smartphone platform in the U.S. to date. Second, iOS users are engaging more frequently with their mobile devices, doing so on a daily basis than a normal Android user does on average. Third, a large number of mobile web users are surfing the internet on the iPad (still considered a mobile device), and this could be the reasons why Safari continues to dominate mobile web browser usage”.
Details of NetApplications. mobile web browser report are posted on the company’s website. The collected data comes from 160 million visits to over 40,000 websites per month and includes traffic from both smartphones and tablets.
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