comScore: Apple iPad responsible for 89% of worldwide tablet data traffic

comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the launch of Device Essentials™, a new service reporting on digital traffic by device, which includes computers and other devices, defined as mobile phones, tablets, music players, e-readers, gaming devices, and other web-enabled devices. Based on comScore’s global Unified Digital Measurement™ (UDM) data, which utilizes census-level information from tagged web page content, Device Essentials includes comScore’s first publicly available data showing device activity by connection type and device category.

“comScore is excited to announce the availability of Device Essentials to provide critical insight into traffic patterns sourcing from the wide array of devices today,” said Serge Matta, comScore Executive Vice President of Telecom and Wireless, in the press release. “Using comScore’s proprietary global UDM data set, we have been able to develop an expansive profile of traffic patterns across device type, connection type and geography which delivers the critical insight needed by wireless carriers, OEMs, publishers and app developers to optimize their marketing strategies and customer experience.”

comScore Device Essentials will initially report exclusively on page view activity and is immediately available across all of comScore’s reporting geographies. The number of different reporting dimensions available in this service provides answers to a variety of digital business questions. Reporting capabilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Share of smartphone and feature phone usage by OS
• Carrier share of smartphone traffic
• OS share of carrier traffic
• Traffic to site content categories by carrier, OS and device type
• Mobile HTML vs. standard HTML traffic by content by device type
• WiFi vs. Non-WiFi traffic

iPad and Other Device Traffic Contribution by Country

comScore Device Essentials sheds light on traffic patterns by device across geographies. One of the most rapidly emerging digital traffic trends occurring across many countries is the impact of the Apple iPad and other tablets. In the analysis below of thirteen countries covering five continents, we can see how traffic is sourced from various devices.

The iPad is currently the dominant tablet device across all geographies, contributing more than 89 percent of tablet traffic across all markets. The iPad’s contribution to total non-computer device traffic is highest in Canada (33.5 percent). Brazil has the second highest non-computer device share of traffic coming from the iPad at 31.8 percent, although non-computer devices account for less than 1 percent of total traffic in the country. In Singapore, where non-computer devices comprise nearly 6 percent of total traffic, the iPad accounts for 26.2 percent of this traffic.

Interestingly, we can see that while Android tablets significantly lag behind Apple in the U.S. tablet market, the platform actually bests Apple in the Smartphone space (35.6 percent vs. 23.5 percent). iPod Touches contribute a notable percentage of non-computer device traffic across most countries, while other devices such as e-readers and gaming systems contribute only a very modest percentage.

Newspaper Content Skews toward Mobile and Tablet Access across Geographies

Device Essentials also provides visibility into site content category traffic by geography and device type. In the analysis below, comScore examined traffic patterns to the online newspaper category to understand how much each device type contributes to total category traffic. Among the markets studied, the U.K. had the greatest share of non-computer device traffic going to the category at 9.8 percent, followed by Singapore (8.8 percent), and Japan (7.0 percent).

*Non-Computer Device Traffic Newspaper Category Index = Share of Non-PC Traffic for Newspaper Category / Share of Non-PC Traffic for Total Internet x 100. Index of 100 indicates average representation.

comScore also analyzed the extent to which non-computer device traffic to the newspaper category was overrepresented relative to the category’s share of total Internet traffic. The results indicated that across all countries studied, with the exception of India, the newspaper category was significantly more likely than average to be accessed via non-computer devices. Brazil exhibited the highest relative skew in newspaper category traffic (Index of 316), followed by Chile (Index of 226) and the UK (Index of 184).

iOS Outpaces Android in U.S. Mobile Content Access via WiFi

Another important dynamic of device traffic is the division between access over mobile networks and access via WiFi/LAN networks. comScore analyzed the differences in traffic patterns between iOS and Android devices to understand these splits by network access, with the results showing that iOS phones and tablets sourced a significantly higher share of device traffic from WiFi networks than Android devices. In the smartphone market, 47.5 percent of iPhone traffic occurred over WiFi networks compared to 21.7 percent of Android phones. With respect to tablets, an overwhelming 91.9 percent of iPad traffic occurred over WiFi networks compared to 65.2 percent among Android tablets.

Soucre: comScore, Inc.