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Wall Street Journal: "iPhones take over the Internet"

by Erica Sadun Dec 5th 2007 at 1:00PM

Over at the Wall Street Journal, Ben Worthen posts that iPhones were responsible for 0.09% of all Web page views in November. In comparison, all the other mobile Windows-based browsers accounted for only 0.06% of page views. From this, we can deduce the following:
  • Viewing the Web on most mobile devices stinks.
  • Viewing the Web on the iPhone doesn't stink.
  • Most people still use computers to view the web.

Thanks, Eddie.



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Over at the Wall Street Journal, Ben Worthen posts that iPhones were responsible for 0.09% of all Web page views in November. In...
 

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chus3r

Where I work the stats are actually quite a bit higher for the iPhone. Higher than Linux actually. It is notable though that this is based on people accessing the site, not on the number of pages viewed. The iPhone users do not appear to be looking at as much information as computer users...lending further cred to point regarding the cumbersome nature of mobile devices.

December 05 2007 at 3:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
russell

Or you could deduce that every iPhone plan comes with unlimited data, whereas pretty much every other mobile device you have to pay a good deal more than the price of the cheapest plan to get any useful amount of data (whats with these 10MB plans? I use more than that every minute from my computer)

December 05 2007 at 3:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to russell's comment
Sam Weiss

Sprint had very cheap data plans... about $15/month On 3G. That makes it cheaper than the iphone service + data. (But sprint's customer service is absolutely horrible. I will never use them again)

The cost wasn't the reason for me. Most mobile browsers are very disappointing.

December 05 2007 at 4:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gwydion

Does it count all smartphone browsers that are using HTTP_USER_AGENT as desktop browser?

December 05 2007 at 3:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Daniel Burns

Or it's a bunch of BS:

http://www.russellbeattie.com/blog/lies-damn-lies-and-mobile-browser-market-share-reports

December 05 2007 at 2:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Daniel Burns's comment
Sam Weiss

I just posted this on that website. I would believe it, because no one browses the web on their phone (other than iphones) because the web browsing sucks!

I've had many "smartphones" over the years... probably before smart phones were called smart phones:
* Handspring PDA, with huge phone attachment
* Treo
* Windows Mobile

And finally, the iphone

With each device I had giddy anticipation of being able to surf the web with it. And with each device (except the iphone) I was always very disappointed at how sucky web surfing is on it.

Until I got my iphone. Which without wifi is still sucky, but with wifi, is super! I'll keep it next to my bed, as I often think of things I want to search for as I'm drifting off to sleep (and no its nothing that should be censored, thank you very much). It's a great web browser. Not as good as a real computer with dual monitors.

Yes there may be 20mm phones with web browsers on them, but how many people actually use the web with those phones?? I know of very few. Even mobile web pages generally didn't give me the information I was searching for.

December 05 2007 at 4:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sam the Deaf

treo on web doesn't stink.

December 05 2007 at 2:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Sam the Deaf's comment
Clifford

Treo on the web doesn't stink? Are you kidding?

It may be better than some other stuff, but it's a miserable experience. When my laptop went down, I did the majority of my web surfing (and writing) on a Palm TX and then a Palm LifeDrive over a year and a half period. The iPod Touch is about thisclose to taking care of every gripe I had with the TX.

December 05 2007 at 3:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
π

Yes it does. What are you doing at an Apple blog anyway? Go back to your little Treo blog.

December 06 2007 at 8:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mojo

i was wondering how to pull up these stats and here goes WSJ. Here is an example. I was sick and tired of eating chinese every nite for the past 2 months(its cheap and tastes good), so one day last week when i was driving home from work i remembered seeing a baja fresh somewhere on my way home, so i googled for it ..voila first result with the phone number...another touch...i was already ordering burritos. I picked up the food in the next 10 mins and went home like a fat happy man.

i dont need to note down the number from the web and then call like other windows mobile devices. This is sooooooooo cool

December 05 2007 at 1:58 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jon

I can guarantee that that number would be higher if the iPhone supported 3G services.

December 05 2007 at 1:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Jon's comment
Matthew

I can guarantee you that if the iPhone had 3rd party apps like other smartphones, the browser usage would be lower.

So we have inflated browser stats because of no 3rd party apps.

All in all? The figure is useless.

December 05 2007 at 2:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joel Ivory Johnson

I was about to point out the lack of 3rd part app support too. Dang, I got beat to it.

December 05 2007 at 3:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chris

How about...
• Viewing the Web on mobile devices is more tedious than on a computer.
• Viewing the Web on the iPhone is less tedious than on other mobile devices.
• Most people still use computers to view the web.

December 05 2007 at 1:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Catt

Or we can deduce that there are a whole lot of people out there with iPhones :-)

December 05 2007 at 1:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
BRockNYLA

Excellent analysis! I couldn't agree more.

December 05 2007 at 1:09 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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