{"id":96379,"date":"2014-02-10T13:07:10","date_gmt":"2014-02-10T11:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=96379"},"modified":"2014-02-10T16:37:45","modified_gmt":"2014-02-10T14:37:45","slug":"surprising-sa-browser-stats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/96379-surprising-sa-browser-stats.html","title":{"rendered":"Surprising SA browser stats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet Explorer<\/a> may still cling to the top desktop browser spot in South Africa, but over the course of 2013 Microsoft\u2019s browser has actually slipped to fourth place overall.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to the latest statistics from StatCounter<\/a>, a web analytics service that reports usage statistics of browsers (among other things) based on raw page views.<\/p>\n

The StatCounter GlobalStats website<\/a> lets you query usage statistics by region and by platform, which reveals that mobile browsing now dominates in South Africa.<\/p>\n

This is clearly illustrated in the graph below, which shows that after a few months of steady growth, mobile page views from South Africa suddenly spiked in October 2013 across the sites tracked by StatCounter.<\/p>\n

\"Website<\/a>

Website page views by platform in South Africa, December 2008 – January 2014, StatCounter<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

By contrast, StatCounter\u2019s worldwide desktop versus mobile trendline shows a far less dramatic shift. Desktop browsers accounted for 71.82% of the total page views in January 2014, while mobile browsers made up 22.4%.<\/p>\n

The dramatic increase in mobile page views in South Africa correlates with the sudden spike in Opera\u2019s usage share StatCounter saw during October 2013.<\/p>\n

This anomaly didn\u2019t go unnoticed to StatCounter either, and the analytics company includes the following statement in its graph for South African mobile browsing statistics:<\/p>\n

On 26 September, we saw a large increase in traffic from Opera browsers. This activity was not bot-related and appears to have been entirely legitimate. Opera traffic returned to more usual levels at the end of October. Unexpected but legitimate spikes in our stats do happen (e.g. in Mexico on 1 July 2012 browser stats) albeit that we are unable to provide explanations in every case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\t\t