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Mobile browser shares 3/4

We continue our survey of the mobile browser market shares of twelve countries: Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Poland, South Korea, the UK, and the US. In all countries I studied the Q4 2010 aggregate stats and compared them to the Q3 ones.

In part 1 we studied three developing nations that each had Opera as their leading browser; in part 2 we discussed the US and the UK, which feature a three-way race between Safari, BlackBerry, and Android, and South Korea, where Android (more specifically, homegrown Samsung Galaxy) is dominant.

This entry treats Brazil, Mexico, and China. Figures, as usual, come from StatCounter.

Though the details differ, Brazil and Mexico display a similar pattern: two browsers have each one third of the market, with the rest holding the remaining third. The other browsers are winning on the incumbents, though.

China brings us back to developing nation patterns, although it’s not Opera that’s dominant here.

Brazil

Stats.

Brazil displays the Opera/Nokia pattern we first encountered in part 1, although unusually Nokia is larger than Opera here. However, both leaders are losing market share to a host of others, notably Samsung (bada) and NetFront.

In fact, of the smaller browsers only Safari loses heavily, while all the others remain constant or gain market share. BlackBerry is not a player, while Android is remaining stable at a meager 3%. Unusual.

I don’t yet know what to make of the Brazilian market, but I’ll follow it with interest. There’s a story brewing here.

Mexico

Stats.

Mexico also has two larger browsers and a host of small ones, but here it’s Safari that takes on Nokia — and is losing.

Here, too, the smaller browsers have won a lot of market share. In fact, with 11 browsers at 1% market share or more, Mexico is the most fragmented of the twelve countries I studied. Fortunately the major winners are familiar: BlackBerry and Android.

Also, Opera holds a middle position in Mexico. Where in all other countries it’s either in the top-two or 4% or less, it’s holding out as a mid-sized browser here.

China

Stats.

In China, finally, we again encounter a familiar pattern with a proxy browser dominant. Here, though, the browser is not Opera but homegrown UCWeb, which uses its own (not very good) rendering engine.

China is also the single country of the twelve where Safari gained market share. The iPhone is new to the Chinese market, and it will be interesting to follow its ascent, which probably will follow a trajectory roughly similar to what we saw in the West two years ago.

Continue

The fourth and last part looks at the Netherlands, Egypt, and Poland, and closes off with an overview table.