Now that Q1 of 2018 is up, it’s that time to stop and reflect on the patterns we’ve seen in the data collected over this first quarter of the year. In terms of browsers and their usage among Uptodown users, we’ve seen a clear trend towards mobile usage and a fairly steep decrease in desktop activity. In fact, 80% of all the traffic generated on Uptodown takes places via mobile devices. Overall, Uptodown saw over 722M sessions from January 1st to April 30th 2018. By segmenting that traffic to analyze browsers and devices users log onto from, we’ve come up with a few observations.
Most widely used browsers on Android
Chrome: Reigns over all other browsers
The popular choice is one again Google’s own browser. Our users clearly tend to log onto each of the different sections of our site from Chrome. As such, a whopping 48.45% of all our visits are straight from Chrome on Android. That means that 350M users visited Uptodown from Chrome — specifically v.64 and v.65. Recent updates and overall improvements have turned this browser in an all-terrain vehicle of sorts that’s hard to beat.
Samsung Internet Browser: just under your radar
37% of all Uptodown users log on through a Samsung device. As expected, the ubiquitous South Korean mobile magnate has, literally, no rival when it comes to our visitors. All in all, that totals 49M sessions — or rather, 6.76% of our traffic, from its browser: Samsung Internet Browser. That said, in terms of downloads, Samsung Internet Browser ranks no where near our top most downloaded browsers, but that comes as no surprise as it’s pre-installed by default on all Samsung devices.
Most popular devices visiting Uptodown
UC Browser: a fine alternative, making quite a comeback
After a few initial setbacks in 2017, when UC Browser was removed from a few major marketplaces, UC Mobile is back with a vengeance this time as the popular browser accrued over 40M user visits on our site — 5.52% of all our total users. Its quick and easy to use interface make for an indie browser of sorts that’s in vogue among our top downloads with over 35M downloads for UC Browser lite and 30M for the original.
Opera Mini: the best ‘lite’ browser
A lot of users are in search of a decent browser that takes up as little of your system resources as possible. In fact, 26M users choose Opera Mini. That makes up just shy of 3.5% of our traffic. This time, the Norwegian giant is trying their hand at Opera Touch, a tool that allows you to seamlessly send content from your Android to your PC.
Firefox: old school never goes out of style
And of course, we couldn’t end this list without at least a nod to one of the top browsers out there, the classic: Firefox. As one of the most widely used tools to access Uptodown, it’s seen over 5M user visits of late. With multiple functionalities and old school charm, it’s the preferred browser among 0.73% of consumers.
Generic Browsers
That said, not all our traffic comes from top, recognizable browsers. Over 47M visits originate through webview versions of external apps like Twitter and Facebook. And another 40M user visits are directly from Android Browser (the old browsing tool that used to come with Android 4.0 KitKat, which was eventually replaced by Google Chrome).
Uptodown reaches pretty much every corner of the planet, and a marked diversity among tech preferences is clearly shown in terms of the types of devices used to log on. In fact, of out of the 582M visits from Android devices within the Q1 of 2018, a total of 85M are updated and have Android 7.0 Nougat launched back in 2016.
Most common Android OS versions
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