Mobile browsing accounted for 10.29 percent of all web traffic in October

Desktop browsers may find their market already quite competitive, but it seems they may have to face competition from mobile browsers in the future too. According to data compiled by  Netmarketshare, mobile browsing accounted for 10.29 percent of the total web traffic in October, a significant growth from December 2011’s 7.67 percent.

But mobile and tablet browsers still have a long way to go before desktop browsers are obsolete – desktop browsing currently accounts for 89.37 percent. But this is an indicator of how users are increasingly turning to mobile devices to fulfil their browsing needs.

For desktop browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, thanks to it coming pre-installed as the default browser in most of the PCs sold in the last 14 years, is still King. It has gained some market share from September’s 53.63 percent and currently leads with a giant 54.13 percent.

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Mobile browsing on the rise

But IE having the giant’s share of the Internet browser market is old news. The real excitement is at the arena of the battle for second place between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. This month, Firefox has secured the second spot with a 19.99 percent market share, closely followed by Chrome with its 18.55 percent share. Both Firefox and Chrome’s market share has fallen by a bit since September, though.

Apple’s Safari lags behind Chrome with a measly 5 percent share. Opera holds just 1.63 percent of the desktop browser market, which has remained unchanged since September.

On the mobile and tablet browser front, iOS’ Safari, which is the stock browser on iPads and iPhones, leads with a giant 60.3 percent market share. The Android browser is quite far behind, and counts for just 25.95 percent of the total browser market. This might be attributed to the large amount of fragmentation in the Android mobile phone market, and users opting for other alternative browsers. As compared to September, Safari’s share fell by almost 4 percent, while the Android browser’s share increased by 5 percent.

Opera’s performance in the tablet and mobile place is quite better than on the desktop front — Opera mini comes in at third place with an 8.24 percent market share, but its full-fledged Opera Mobile browser accounts for only 0.50 percent. Opera mini’s market share has fallen by more than 1 percent since September, and by more than 13 percent since December last year.

Blackberry’s internet browser accounts for a mere 1.32 percent of the mobile and tablet browser market, while Symbian, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for mobile, Chrome, and other Internet browsers accounting for the remaining 2.56 percent of the market. Blackberry’s market share has fallen steadily since December 2011, when it had a 3 percent market share, while Symbian has been waging a losing battle for market share.