Samsung has overtaken Apple worldwide in smartphone browser use, while Google Chrome and Microsoft Windows 7 remain the dominant desktop web browsing platforms, according to new market research from StatCounter.
The figures for June 2013 show more mobile web browsers now run on a Samsung than any other manufacturer’s devices, with its marketshare jumping from 19.46% to 25.47% year-on-year, overtaking Nokia and Apple.
Second-place Apple’s mobile web usage figures shrank slightly, from 25.43% to 25.09%, while Nokia’s share slumped from 28.05% to just 21.96%.
While BlackBerry’s share dropped from 5% a year ago to 3.48% in January, the introduction of its new Z10 and Q10 smartphones have seen its share increase slightly to 3.62%.
The strength of Samsung helped Google Android claim the crown as the smartphone platform most commonly used to browse the web, growing its marketshare from 26.53% to 37.93%.
Second placed Apple iOS saw its marketshare dip slightly from 25.41% to 25.09%, ahead of both Nokia Series 40 (down to 13.43%) and Symbian (down to 7.69%).
Meanwhile, despite increasing its share from 0.68% to 1.4%, Windows Phone remains significantly behind BlackBerry, which claims 3.46% of the market.
The strength of Android helped its stock browser grow from 23.16% marketshare in the mobile web browser market a year ago to 29.06% to claim the top spot, overtaking Safari, which saw its marketshare remaining flat on 24.88%.
Third-placed Opera dipped slightly from 19.41% to 16.06%, Blackberry dropped from 4.71% to 3.11% and Chrome use on mobile devices grew from 0.5% to 3.23%.
The shifts in marketshare were more subdued in the more mature desktop PC market.
The figures show Google Chrome grew its market leading position in the desktop computer browser market to 42.68%, up from 32.42% a year earlier.
The growth in Chrome use came at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer, which saw its marketshare fall from 32.04% to 25.44%, while Mozilla’s Firefox dipped slightly from 23.73% to 20.01%.
In terms of operating systems, Microsoft’s Windows 7 has increased in usage – despite the introduction of Windows 8 – from 51.14% to 52.62%.
Customer loyalty has helped to preserve Windows XP as the second most popular operating system on 21.06%, well ahead of either Windows 8 (5.94%) or Windows Vista (5.4%).
The most popular non-Microsoft platform was Apple Mac OS X, which saw its marketshare climb slightly from 6.92% to 7.43%.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
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