Digital 2022: Mobile Duopoly Consolidates its Grip
Various data points in our new Digital 2022 Global Overview Report indicate that Google and Apple continue to extend their lead in the smartphone market.
For example, data from Statcounter reveals that more than 7 in 10 mobile web page requests (70.74 percent) now originate from devices running Google’s Android operating system, while Apple iPhones account for a further 28.54 percent.
These figures mean that Android and iPhone devices account for a staggering 99.28 percent of all mobile web page requests, indicating that just 1 in every 138 mobile handsets in use around the world today isn’t running on an operating system developed by one of these two companies.
Meanwhile, data from Facebook tells a similar story.
Figures published in the company’s self-service advertising tools reveal that 81.8 percent of the platform’s mobile users access via apps running on Android devices, while apps running on iOS devices accounted for a further 14.8 percent.
However, handsets running Android and iOS may account for a meaningful share of the remaining 3.4 percent too, because that figure includes users who accessed the platform via a mobile browser rather than a native mobile app, regardless of which platform the browser was running on.
For context, Facebook’s data shows that a massive 98.5 percent of all users access the platform via mobile devices at least some of the time, and 81.8 percent only use Facebook on a mobile phone [note: the fact that figures for mobile-only access and Android access are the same is likely only a coincidence].
Looking beyond mobile, the duopoly’s dominance is evident in overall web browser data too, with Statcounter’s latest global numbers revealing that Chrome and Safari dominate across phones and computers.
Devices running Google Chrome accounted for nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of all web-page requests in November 2021, while Apple’s Safari browser accounted for an additional 19.2 percent.
These numbers mean that less than 1 in 6 web page requests (16.7 percent) now come from browsers made by other companies, with Microsoft Edge and Firefox accounting for almost half of the remainder.
Want to learn more about the state of digital in 2022? Check out our full Digital 2022 Global Overview Report by clicking here.
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