As Singapore awaits the launch of iPhone 3G(S) by SingTel on 10th July 2009, it is perhaps an appropriate time to see how the iPhone has influenced the mobile browsing habits of mobile users in the country. I'll be using data from StatCounter which uses a sample size of more than 3 million websites with more than 4 billion pageviews per month.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Browser Market Share
As you can see from the graph above, Nokia's browser (presumably Symbian) has swapped the leadership position with iPhone's Safari browser over many months since the start of 2009. Interestingly, there is a divergent break in this flipping trend between the two browsers sometime last month. I decided to do a more focused analysis on this by using data for the last three months (i.e. April to July 08):
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Browser Market Share
It seems that the divergent break started on 14 June 2009 and this gap between the browsers widened since 1st July 2009. As of 8 July 2009, more than 38% of all websites were accessed Nokia's mobile browser in Singapore. In comparison, slightly more than 26% used iPhone's Safari to access websites in Singapore in the same period. It will be interesting to see the effect of iPhone 3G(S) on the mobile browser competition in Singapore following their launch tomorrow.
How is this information useful for marketing professionals? Simply said, the two dominant mobile digital platforms today are Nokia and Apple. I'm sure advertisers know this trend, either through popular perception or through word-of-mouth from the marketing community. Nonetheless, the need to justify and convince senior management such as the CFO or CEO on investments in mobile marketing can now use these trends as the rationale to perhaps develop apps to tap on this increasingly tech-savvy target audience. I'm sure a picture speaks a thousand words for your internal proposal to get the budget needed to meet your marketing objectives.
- Darren -
