Wednesday, April 9,2008 @ 4:40pm
Safari: most popular mobile browser in US
StatCounter today revealed that Safari is the most popular web browser in use in the United States, surpassing Windows Mobile, Palm, and Opera by a wide margin. According to Yahoo, Safari occupies 0.23 percent of US web traffic, with Nokia devices coming in at around 0.08 percent. Internationally, however, their positions are reversed: Nokia was found to have the top tier spot with 0.25 percent share, while the iPhone came in second with 0.08 percent.
Net Applications found that the iPhone and iPod touch saw 0.19 percent of global web traffic, with Windows Mobile following at 0.06 percent. It does not account for Nokia's share, and the Safari findings allegedly contain all desktop Safari versions as well.
Gartner analyst Neil McDonald says the reason that the iPhone and iPod touch are so successful is that Safari provides a full browser experience, rather than the typically trimmed down browsers found on Palm and Windows Mobile devices. He also claims that the variety of stripped down applications like Office create an awkward system for most users. He recommends that Microsoft consider blending its Zune MP3 players with its mobile OS platform in an attempt to garner the same attention the iPhone does.