51Degrees shares what has changed since we shared usage trends in Aug 2017
In August 2017 we wrote an article outlining Samsung Internet usage trends. As the mobile web industry collectively moves forward with each passing day, we take a look at the current usage trends to see what, if anything, has changed. Since August, a multitude of flagship devices has been released (including the Note8). During the same period, both Android and Apple released their latest mobile operating systems to the public. All of these variables can and do affect the usage of a browser, which is why at 51Degrees we don’t just care about the device, browser, or operating system as individual entities. We look at the bigger picture, and currently (as of Dec 2017) we detect over 865,000 combinations of the aforementioned entities, which help provide our clients with deeper insights regarding the devices used to access their websites, ads, publications and apps. The device data files can vary depending on your specific requirements.
Samsung Internet Usage Trends
Looking at the graph, Samsung Internet has not continued on an upward trend, having hit usage highs throughout September to October after the final instalments of the flagship series were released. Possibly due to Apple releasing the iPhone 8 and X series and the corresponding traffic using Mobile Safari. An area to focus for 2018 will no doubt be the Middle East region, where total traffic peaked at just under 18% for 2017. Whilst sustained traffic in the Middle East could be key, attempts will have to be made to address the recent decline and stabilise usage across all regions.
While Samsung Internet has only recently become available to non-Samsung phones, it has been around for a good number of years and still has a way to go to break into the moulded mindsets of users of Chrome Mobile and Mobile Safari. Would Samsung ever make the browser available for iOS devices? A hard decision to call but one that would be a foolproof tactic to increase browser usability across the device market.
Why Samsung Internet?
Tagline - ‘Samsung Internet for Android is a Simple, Fast, and Reliable web browser for your phone and tablet’
But why would you change your current mobile browser to Samsung Internet?
- More secure web surfing
- Content blocking
- Secret Mode
- Reading Mode (turns cluttered text on web pages into legible, linear paragraphs)
- The best performing browser on Galaxy
- Browsing in VR
If you are on an Android device you can download Samsung Internet from the Googe Play Store
For general info - see here
For developer info - see here
Samsung Internet availability on Non-Samsung/Nexus devices
Since the release of Samsung Internet beta v6.2, all smartphones that run Android 5.0 or above are now able to download and use Samsung Internet. This has meant that we have seen a lot of new incoming User-Agent strings from non-Samsung devices using Samsung Internet. For instance, 51Degrees has identified that ‘SAMSUNG’ is always present before the device ID token. The following two User-Agents are examples of LG & Huawei devices that have made a web request whilst running Samsung Internet. They are both linked to our User-Agent tester.
The chart above shows the percentage of devices that we have detected running Samsung Internet that are not Samsung or Nexus devices. To be included on the chart, the vendor needed to have a minimum of 10 unique devices that we had detected running Samsung Internet. ‘Other’ would appear to be in pole position as there are over 50+ vendors in that one segment ahead of the larger vendors such as Huawei, LG and Lenovo.
51Degrees is already detecting User-Agents running Samsung Internet version 7.0 ready for the public announcement of the latest version.