The most (and least) popular devices used to browse Ausdroid in 2017

Inspired by this post on Android Police, we decided to trawl through our Analytics to figure out which devices had been most popular amongst readers of Ausdroid, and those devices which barely rated a mention. 

Why do this? I was interested to see if there was much difference doing this for an Australian audience as opposed to a much larger US-based website. Of the 2,000,000 mobile sessions with Ausdroid this year, there are some surprising findings, including some similarities and a few differences to the US experience. So, read on to find out how we put this together, and the results we found.

Methodology

Like Android Police, our data is compiled using Google Analytics, which allows you to sort traffic by mobile device. About 5% of our mobile traffic doesn’t register a particular device, either because of their browser or because the manufacturer of the phone left the field undefined. It’s also worth noting that unlike other series phones (e.g. Galaxy S4, S5, S6), Apple’s devices aren’t broken down — all iPhones report as iPhone, and iPads as iPad; there’s no indication of which particular device is used.

The top 10 devices (as well as Apple)

1. Apple iPhone – 13.07%
2. Apple iPad – 6.08%
3. Google Nexus 6P – 5.49%
4. Google Pixel XL – 4.54%
5. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge – 4.44%
6. Samsung Galaxy S7 – 3.47%
7. Google Pixel – 3.03%
8. Google Nexus 5X – 2.33%
9. Samsung Galaxy S8 – 1.85%
10. Samsung Galaxy S8+ – 1.83%
11. Samsung Galaxy S5 – 1.71%
12. Samsung Galaxy S6 – 1.63%

A somewhat surprising finding is that, in total, 19.15% of our mobile audience used Apple devices. We can’t say which ones, beyond iPhone and iPad, but still, that’s a big slice of the pie.

To keep it a bit more relevant, here’s the same data for the month of December 2017, showing which current devices are most popular:

1. Apple iPhone – 19.32%
2. Apple iPad – 8.64%
3. Google Pixel 2 XL – 5.06%
4. Samsung Galaxy S8 – 3.42%
5. Samsung Galaxy S7 – 2.93%
6. Samsung Galaxy S8+ – 2.74%
7. Google Pixel XL – 2.61%
8. Google Nexus 6P – 2.52%
9. Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge – 2.17%
10. Samsung Galaxy Note 8 – 2.16%
11. Google Pixel – 1.78%
12. Samsung Galaxy S5 – 1.56%

Here’s some strange findings

Firstly, whoever’s still using the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, return that deathtrap and get a refund. 7 readers used the Galaxy Note 7 regularly during December 2017. Like seriously, wtf?

The top phones that aren’t Apple? They’re dominated by Google’s Pixel line and Samsung’s flagship phones. By a convincing margin, too. In fact, to get past these phones and find something different, we have to dig down the list quite a bit. Here’s where there’s some other flavour, and this is for the month of December only:

• Number 16: Acer A1-850 Iconia
• Number 18: OnePlus 5
• Number 19: LG G6
• Number 20: HTC 10
• Number 22: Moto G5 Plus

One thing we can draw from this is that LG users aren’t ranked highly in our readership either. LG G6 fares reasonably well at #19, and then we dig down and find the V20 at #26, V30 at #32 and LG’s G4 (still going, apparently) at #36.

Motorola does alright, first showing at #22 with the Moto G5 Plus and at #24 with Moto G4. The fact that they’re not a huge percentage of our readership (something like 1% of mobile devices in total) says that Motorola, while doing well, could do a lot better.

HTC’s 10 is at position #20, and the rest of their devices don’t even show in the top 100. This doesn’t bode well, despite the (apparent) popularity of the HTC U11 range.

The first Sony appears at position #35, with the Sony Xperia XZ Premium. The Xperia Z5 is way lower at #48. While Sony made a lot of song and dance about these phones earlier in the year, they’re really not advertised all that widely – compared to say Samsung and Google’s devices – and so it isn’t all that surprising there aren’t many readers using them.

Huawei is another surprise, with their P9 and Mate 9 the first appearances around #37 – #45. This year’s Huawei P10 rated a mere 0.10% of the readership at rank #87. The Mate 10 range didn’t even factor.

The last but not least is old Nexus phones – the Nexus 5X and 6P are well over two years old now, and yet still account for a combined 3.66% of visitors in December 2017. Apparently people don’t like to let go of a good thing .. not that the Nexus 5X was much good, but the 6P was certainly better.

What can we make of this?

Our mobile readership – which is roughly half of our entire readership – prefers Google and Samsung products (when they’re not using Apple). So, next time you’re wondering why we devote so much time to Samsung and Google rumours, now you know.

There’s significantly less use of what we would consider the other ‘major’ brands such as LG, HTC and Sony. Huawei is also surprisingly low on the overall readership.

Perhaps most relevant at this time of the yearly cycle – in the month or two prior to Mobile World Congress – is that precisely nothing launched at MWC 2017 features in the top 10, either for the year or for the month of December. In fact, the highest of them – LG’s G6 – doesn’t show until position 19.

I think what we can take from this is something we’ve known for a while; Ausdroid’s readership prefers the mainstream devices, and though there is significant vocal interest in more niche devices (and those from emerging manufacturers), those vocal users do not make up the bulk of our actual readers. We’ll take something from these findings into 2018, and we look forward to seeing what exciting new products we can report on next year!