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Hah! I've almost given up using my computer to browse the web. Soon they'll be measuring mobile safari taking a piece of the non-mobile Market too

When Jobs introduced the iPhone at MWSF 2007 he talked about the 'killer app' of telephones. He then described the 3 parts of the iPhone, the cell phone, the music player, and the 'internet device'.

It's apparent now that Apple saw the 'internet device' as the major differentiator of the iPhone. It explains the large screen and full fledged browser, when everyone else wasn't.

Touch screen was necessary in order to free up screen real estate. Everything about the iPhone starts with the large screen.

Others will be able to ship large screens, but now they are playing catch up with what Apple has done because of the large screen. While the competition is introducing weak first generation clones, Apple is preparing its third generation.

Mar 01, 09 - 05:58 pm Comment from: Zune Tang®

The I-Phone also holds a commanding lead among smug, pretentious cultists who could have bought a real phone that costs less and runs Windows Mobile. Dorks.

Your potential. Our passion.™

@gregg
I agree 100%, my friends with crackberries always demure to my iPhone for info on the internet. Their browser sucks. Safari is the true killer app that was overlooked when iPhone was introduced.

So true. I'm on mine now. Internet has been entertaining and indispensable when I travel.

Wondering: will Safari's speedup be coming to the phone too?

I'm hoping AT&T;or Verizon gets their act together and offers the iPhone with a data plan and tethering that won't break my bank. Until then I suffer with the others in the 6.91% category, using Windows Mobile 6.1 and an array of second-rate browsers on a cantankerous and buggy platform with frequent soft resets and a perfectly horrendous (but somewhat usable, with practice) user interface.

Mar 01, 09 - 06:18 pm Comment from: treestman

First this:

"I'm hoping AT&T;or Verizon gets their act together and offers the iPhone with a data plan and tethering that won't break my bank."

And then this:

"Until then I suffer with the others in the 6.91% category, using Windows Mobile 6.1 and an array of second-rate browsers on a cantankerous and buggy platform with frequent soft resets and a perfectly horrendous (but somewhat usable, with practice) user interface"

In other words, you got what you paid for, or did it never occur to you to relate the two?

Mar 01, 09 - 06:31 pm Comment from: Arnold Ziffel

@Gregg Thurman,

I remember the crowd's reaction when Jobs introduced the "three products," iPod, phone, and internet communicator. The first two were cheered heartily, especially the phone, and just a smattering of applause for the internet communicator. They had no idea what was really happening.

Bloodbath? You're soaking in it.

"Bloodbath? You're soaking in it."

Talk about picking the one bright spot to concentrate on.

With the numbers showing the Mac user base down by 3.5 million units and no growth in the iPhone base, I guess you have to find a bright spot where you can.

Mar 01, 09 - 06:56 pm Comment from: JAYGEE

Android is doing well :D

Mar 01, 09 - 07:19 pm Comment from: ken1w

Obviously, iPhone dominates in this statistic because iPhone users actually use their Internet access capabilities all the time. Most other smart phones have Internet access "features" (for the spec sheets) that are minimal at best, unusable at worst.

Internal advertisers and web designers will take note and prioritize their marketing and development efforts accordingly. Basically, the eyeballs of ONE iPhone user is better than twenty eyeballs of TEN other smartphone users.

Mar 01, 09 - 08:10 pm Comment from: zek

The sheep still haven't really grasped what is happening. The mobile manufacturers and the carriers are still thinking about phones,and after all this time of the 'internet communicator' being under their noses, they still see primarily a phone. This is what is meant by being '5 years ahead of any competition'. It doesn't mean technically. In another two years, the dense people at the other companies will have got it. In the meantime, consumers will continue to reward Apple as they provide the closest thing to what is really useful.

Mar 01, 09 - 08:28 pm Comment from: samuraichef

@Zune Tang: I was just forced to used a Windows Mobile phone with my new job. I cry every time I use it. It is inconsistent, the keyboard is horrible to type on, the typing assistant is handy, but frequently wrong. It does seem to learn what I type about, but I cannot stand that phone. Give me my iPhone, and I'm happy.

Mar 01, 09 - 09:11 pm Comment from: zmarc

What the heck is "bright spot" talking about?

It's probably not just how good the iPhone is. Part of it is that iPhone users all have a phone plan that includes some decent data allowance. There are other 3G phone users running around who have no allowance, or an unaffordable data allowance.

Mar 01, 09 - 11:28 pm Comment from: DogGone

Interesting the the android is making good headway. That clearly with be the challenger for the iPhone in the future.

Mar 01, 09 - 11:33 pm Comment from: monkeybiz

if anyone's ever used an iphone they'd know right away that safari is the killer app. the combo of the large screen real estate and intuitive finger gestures make it easily the best mobile browser on the market.

Mar 02, 09 - 12:19 am Comment from: Randian

The truth is that netbooks are completely irrelevant in today's world. Completely. My wife has a netbook (from her boss at work) and an iPhone (from herself at home), and she never, ever uses the former unless forced to on the job.

Her iPhone is small, truly portable, and more than capable of doing anything and everything her netbook can.

IMHO, we will never see a netbook from Apple: why take a step backward?

Mar 02, 09 - 12:22 am Comment from: binarypackrat

So if this is backed up by numbers then "Microsoft CEO Ballmer dismisses Apple’s iPhone as hype, says Windows Mobile has market momentum" this man is TRULEY DELUSIONAL.

I have to agree. My iPhone handles all of my mobile computing needs just fine, and my data plan didn't increase my monthly bill all that much, (to me, anyway. I suppose that could be relative) about $30 a month. MobileMe is finally very usable, and this stuff is all just incredibly useful. I can see where many users may need more functionality from a portable, but for everyone else, I would highly recommend getting an iPhone. It is a really, really cool device, and will most likely fit in with your existing work flow like a champ.

Mar 02, 09 - 01:31 am Comment from: Brau

Love it. This is starting to look just like the iPod story did a few years ago. Android has almost as much share as Windows Mobile on ONE current smartphone model. I can just hear Ballmer choking on his words, "I'd rather have Windows on 95% of cell phones than on just one model."

Agreeing with the posts above ... Netbooks are almost useless and I doubt Apple will sell one. iPhones (or smartphones) do every thing I need without needing a backpack or briefcase.

Hey, check out the mobile browser share! Safari is at 77.56 % followed by Opera Mini with 9.06 %. BlackBerry is on 10th position with 0.07 % although I have now idea if different browsers on the BlackBerry (such as Opera) can be used.

and where is all the profit coming from?

Notebook computers and iPod/iPhones...

the Netbook doesn't help the bottom line...

I was attending a military leadership conference about two months ago. One of the topic that came up was "Admirals Revolt." No one knew what that was about. So, those with their crackberries started doing their googling and wikis. I did mine on my iPhone. I came up with the info first.

Math is something Bright Spot cannot comprehend.
Year over year sales for the quarter showed growth in both Mac and iPhone sales.

Of course, I could take the low road and call Bright Spot a liar, but that'd be rude.

One of the problems with WinMo is that it is NOT on just one model . . . it has to run o every shitty phone out there. Just like Winblows has to run on every junk box out there. It makes for a lousy and definitely inconsistent user experience.

But whatever keeps the MS cash register running . . .

MDN, thank you for almost full coverage of Net Applications OS market share reports.

However, we are still missing the OS market share reporting for February 2009 .. and October 2008 ... and July 2008 ...
The reason why these did not make it to MDN can be found here:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/os-market-share.aspx?qprid=9

Mar 02, 09 - 07:40 am Comment from: cptnkirk

I guess the iPhone IS Apple's netbook. How long will we have to wait for the analysts and bloggers to see that. LOL!

Not talking about how the mac market share is to pre-december levels?

Thank you for the link. It's nice to see the Mac OS consistently performing well over the course of the year. You felt compelled i'm sure to point out the months that did not grow compared to the previous month due to some concern over Apple's direction. There's no need to be concerned my friend - it's year on year growth you need to look at.
Over 2% growth is a wonderful achievement.
I would probably be more concerned with the Microsoft statistics myself and i've sent Fester an email with my regards and a shoulder to cry on should he need one.

I hope i've gone some way to set your mind at rest.

"Not talking about how the mac market share is to pre-december levels?"

Why, because iPhone growth has essentially stopped and Mac share is declining. Fanboys brains are currently vapor locked trying to resolve the difference between the numbers and their fanboyish view of the world.

Instead much like Steve Jobs desperately looking for and publishing benchmarks, any irrelevant, nor real world benchmark that would show PPC Macs to be faster than Intel PCs (something which was untrue for years) MDN is doing the same to try to show there's still good news at Apple.

And as to Moo, if you're going to wait to see what happens a year from now to spot trends and understand where your business is going in this current economic environment, I would suggest you're going to be unemployed long before the majority of the population.

The figures seem to indicate Mac OS is continuing to grow.. maybe these Windows-boys are looking at the graphs upside-down?

@It's been noticed and BrightSpot,

Presumably, you are referring to how Mac share is down to 9.61% from Jan when it was 9.93%, and close to December's 9.63%.

Of course, if you look at the history of Mac share, you'll see that there are fluctuations. Just in the last year, we've had July and August be lower than June, October lower than September. And, yet, the one-year trend shows the Mac OS having gone from about 7.5% to just a hair under 10%.

Your fluctuations are considered data noise and are not indicative of a trend.

Data is useless in the hands of the ignorant, and will always be misused for no good. - me

I forgot to link the trendline, illustrating my point:

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=9&qpdt=1&qpct=4&qpcustom=Mac&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=113&qpnp=11

"Data is useless in the hands of the ignorant, and will always be misused for no good. - me"

Perhaps you should stop using data for no good then.

Ahead of time it's impossible to tell if what you are seeing is, as you say "noise" on an upward linear trend line, or the beginning of that trend turning downward. The one thing that you do know with certain is that if you believe the true trend can be established by either moving average techniques or fitting regression lines that this number revises downward the historical growth estimates. Secondly you have to accept that a linear model is not always the right one and a linear regression will be very slow to show any tuning point, so isn't much use for determining that.

Furthermore, fit a quadratic or cubic to the year's growth rates, both forecast market share growth going negative. Those techniques of course account for the "noise" as you call it.

You seem to be showing a bias for optimism, that high numbers are "Correct" and that low numbers are "Noise".

The facts are this, Feb's data point is well below any growth rate trendline, But, so was Jan's. and you're right, perhaps it's just noise too. However given what's going on in the economy what's more likely, that any company's growth rate is staying the same or that any company's growth rate is shrinking or going negative?

Maybe a better hypothesis is that's the start of a pattern. Just to be clear Ken, I'm looking at the slope of the growth rate curve, the rate of change in growth rates, not the growth curve itself as I'm interested in what's happening to Apple's growth rates, not how long a linear regression on past growth will still show a growth trend.

By way of example, Apple's share could go flat, zero growth and it'd be 12 months before Ken and his prized trendline will notice a problem. Right up to the last month of a flat year it'd still show "growth". Apple could lose share at the rate it gained it for the next six months and it'd take that long before Ken's favorite tool showed that growth was gone.

Long before then most people would realize a turning point had been reached.

Most competitors to iPhone "browse" only with WAP. Dewitt says that the survey defines "browsing" to exclude WAP, so of course iPhone will dominate "browsing". So what?