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Mobile browser stats for February

Here are the global mobile browser stats for February 2011, taken from StatCounter. Little is happening; it seems the browser market is taking a few months off after the huge changes of the second half of 2010.

Nokia and Android are one point up; Safari and BlackBerry one point down. Android and BlackBerry continue their trends, Nokia and Safari don’t. That’s it.

So this is the current browser situation:

1. Safari and Opera occupy the top positions. In that order.
2. A centre group with BlackBerry, Android, and Nokia, is vying for third place.
3. Of the minor browsers, only NetFront and Samsung (bada) score above 1%.

Android will grow, of course, but it grows slower than I thought, and I’m not even sure any more it will firmly take the third place in Q1 2011.

Samsung may also grow a bit, and that’s good for web developers: Dolfin for bada is an excellent browser. And the further we go into 2011, the more BlackBerry WebKit, also an excellent browser, will replace the older BlackBerry browsers, making our jobs a bit easier again.

The browser market seems to stabilise — even Android. I think we’ve reached a temporary equilibrium, with only a few percent of the market changing hands quarterly, and the net change being a slow transfer of market share from BlackBerry (and possibly Nokia and Safari) to Android.

This equilibrium will persist at least until Q3, when new phones may be announced. A new iPhone in any case, but maybe a serious stab at an iPhone Nano? And will the first Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices change a lot? They’ll arrive in strength only at the tail end of Q4, I guess.