Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter: Windows Still Dominates
Google Analytics (our favorite website stats program) has a cool feature that you can opt-in to for sharing data. Google Analytics (or GA as we like to so frequently use acronyms) anonymously captures stats from your website and runs analysis to get an overall feel (or pulse) for the web. The folks at Google do claim statistical significance with literally hundreds of thousands of websites participating (we probably have several hundred from our small web studio alone).
They presented quite a bit of information in their recent newsletter but I thought the section on the Operating Systems was quite interesting:
Operating Systems
Browsers and Operation Systems (OS) are identified by the "referrer" string sent by users' browsers.
| % Visits from OS | 11/1/09 - 2/1/10 | 11/1/10 - 2/1/11 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | 89.9% | 84.8% | -5.1% |
| Macintosh | 4.5% | 5.2% | +0.7% |
| Linux | 0.6% | 0.7% | +0.1% |
| Other | 5% | 9.3% | +4.3% |
Particularly these items:
- Windows still completely dominates - Even though they lost share and most likely will continue to do so, they just completely eclipse any other OS out there. You can talk all you want about the up and comers, it is going to be a while before Microsoft loses their throne.
- Big gains in Other OS's - I am assuming this is mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) and possibly a large percentage Android. I wonder if next year we will see enough traffic from Android and/or Chrome OS to have a break out on their own line item and maybe knock that Linux down or even give Apple a run for their money.
One great thing that I love about this industry... You never know what tomorrow will bring.
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