(Image courtesy of Guy Moorhouse)
Earlier this month I dug into the analytics data to better understand what devices people are using when visiting GOV.UK. I thought I’d also quickly share headline data on what browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions we’ve seen over the past month across the whole site. I hope it’s useful.
| Rank | Browser | Jan-14 | Jan-13 |
| 1 | Internet Explorer | 29.2% | 38.7% |
| 2 | Chrome | 27.5% | 21.8% |
| 3 | Safari | 25.0% | 20.4% |
| 4 | Firefox | 8.5% | 10.7% |
| 5 | Android Browser | 7.0% | 5.8% |
| 6 | Safari (in-app) | 0.8% | 1.4% |
| 7 | BlackBerry | 0.7% | 0.4% |
| 8 | Amazon Silk | 0.5% | 0.0% |
| 9 | Opera | 0.4% | 0.5% |
| 10 | Opera Mini | 0.2% | 0.2% |
We’ll publish more detailed browser version breakdown data soon, though I can’t resist sharing that Microsoft IE6 usage seems to have halved to 0.4% from 0.8% over the past 12 months. Note: this browser data combines both desktop and mobile versions.
| Rank | Operating System | Jan-14 | Jan-13 |
| 1 | Windows | 57.0% | 67.9% |
| 2 | iOS | 22.5% | 16.3% |
| 3 | Android | 12.0% | 6.6% |
| 4 | Macintosh | 5.8% | 5.9% |
| 5 | Linux | 1.1% | 1.1% |
| 6 | BlackBerry | 0.7% | 1.0% |
| 7 | Windows Phone | 0.7% | 0.3% |
| 8 | Chrome OS | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| 9 | (not set) | 0.1% | 0.5% |
| 10 | Series40 | 0.0% | 0.0% |
No real surprises here, with Android and iOS mobile operating systems eating into Windows desktop share.
| Rank | Screen Resolution | Jan-14 | Jan-13 |
| 1 | 1366×768 | 17.9% | 19.4% |
| 2 | 768×1024 | 10.4% | 7.7% |
| 3 | 1280×800 | 6.9% | 9.8% |
| 4 | 1024×768 | 6.6% | 9.8% |
| 5 | 1280×1024 | 6.6% | 7.0% |
| 6 | 320×480 | 6.3% | 7.3% |
| 7 | 320×568 | 6.0% | 1.0% |
| 8 | 1920×1080 | 5.2% | 4.2% |
| 9 | 1440×900 | 4.3% | 4.9% |
| 10 | 1600×900 | 2.6% | 2.5% |
Again, the story here is the rapid rise of “portrait” smartphone screen resolutions such as 768×1024 at the expense of traditional “landscape” desktop resolutions. Further evidence of the rapid shift to a wider variety of screen sizes as mobile device use takes off.
(Data sourced from Google Analytics for all visits to GOV.UK for the month up until January 20th. Sample size Jan 2014: 36.4m visits. Jan 2013: 28.4m visits.)
Follow Tom on Twitter and don’t forget to sign up for email alerts
You may also be interested in:
The mobile question: responsive design