Akamai, a company that delivers 30% of the content accessed on the web by users, published recently a study in which it offers various details about the world wide web that we access daily. Referring strictly to mobile terminals, they claim that Androidhas the most used browser when it comes to cellular data connections, 38% of users using this type of browser to surf the Internet, Safari having a market share of 34%, and behind them we find the rest of the browser suite for mobile terminals.
Akamai notes that when it looks at access from mobile devices over cellular networks, Android Webkit is just edging out Mobile Safari, with other browsers trailing quite a ways behind. Webkit, it notes, accounted for 38% of requests, while Safari 34%. When usage was tracked across cellular and other networks (for example, broadband via WiFi), Safari shot into the lead, with 54% of all requests and Android Webkit at 27%+. This could partly be attributed to iPad usage; perhaps also just to the fact that while iOS owners may be proportionally smaller than Android device owners, when you take into account all kinds of usage, they are simply just using their devices more.
If in the case of cellular data Android- wins, when it comes to browsing the web from mobile terminals using any type of connection, Safari is king, with a share of 54%, compared to Android's only 27%. The supremacy of Safari is won with the help of tablets iPad, most of them accessing the Internet only using Wi-Fi connections, and overall this demonstrates the fact that iDevices are used much more often for web browsing than Android terminals.
Akamai also notes that average connection speeds on mobile networks are now ranging from between 9.7Mbps to 0.5Mbps. Akamai doesn't track this itself but notes that Ericsson says that mobile data traffic volume grew 14% in the last year, while voice traffic was up by only 5%.
Leaving browsers aside, Akamai claims that the global average download speed for mobile terminals reached 9.7 Mbps in Q2 2013, while the upload speed is only 0.5 Mbps, the internet traffic generated by mobile terminals increasing by 14% in the last year , while the rate of use of the telephone function increased by only 5%.
