Group items tagged

iOS and Android are neck and neck when you look at web usage on cellular networks. So the question becomes not why do Android users not browse the web as much as iOS users do, but why don’t they browse the web on Wi-Fi connections?

Apple held 61.64% of the mobile/tablet OS market in October, according to Net Applications, up from 54.65% in the prior month, and a hike of more than 12 percentage points from December 2010. Android, in contrast, accounted for 18.9% of the market in October, up from 16.3% in September, an increase of just over 7 percentage points from December.

“A year and a half ago, mobile users tended to spend considerably more time — an average of 64 minutes per day — using the Web browser on their phone or tablet. By comparison, they spent only 43 minutes per day in apps. Now mobile users now spend an average of 94 minutes per day using apps, but just 72 minutes browsing the mobile Web…”

“In March, the web browser accounted for just 18.5 percent of time spent online among US smart-phone users. Mobile apps accounted for the rest. Now we know why Safari for iOS capabilities advance so sparingly: Apple sees it as irrelevant. Stated differently: Safari is to mobile what Internet Explorer 6 was to the desktop 10 years ago. Apps matter more to both developers.”

Adobe Flash is officially no longer available for Android devices. This raises a tough question for Web developers: whether to support Flash at all, and how to migrate a Flash investment for the next-generation of Web users.

Web developers have responded by moving away from Flash. Since last year, Flash usage on Web sites has declined from 27% to 23%, according to W3Techs. In comparison: Microsoft's Silverlight barely moves the needle with deployment of 0.3%, just above Java's 0.2%. JavaScript is used by over 92% of sites. HTML5 is reportedly in active use on 34% of the top 100 Web sites.

Adobe is hoping developers and users will adopt the Adobe AIR (“Adobe Integrated Runtime”) format, which extends many of the core Flash technologies in a cross-platform framework for deploying Web applications. AIR is available for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows, OSX, and Linux.

It found that Android devices lead the way in overall popularity at 51% followed by iPhones at 38%. 

The numbers for Android devices are skewed even higher for the young age group at 58%, showing that marketers must ensure that their sites are equally optimised for apps and web browsers via Android devices as they are for iOS devices.

88% of consumers who shop using mobile apps on Android tablets report the highest levels of satisfaction compared to 71% of iPad users. Similarly satisfaction among Android smartphone users is 69% versus 66% on iPhone

The gender split (69% male, 31% female) and the OS split (53% Android, 43% iOS, 4% other) are slightly surprising.