Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics

Apparently Opera is touting how its mobile version has outpaced Apple's Safari browser for market share... in Ukraine.

Is it just me or is this a non-story? In this PC World story on the topic, they say it's proof that mobile browsing is growing. But look at the percentages... 0.3% and 0.2%. That means out of 1,000 web pages accessed in Ukraine, 3 were accessed by the Opera mobile phone browser. Zero point three percent isn't significant. It's a rounding error.

But more importantly, it's beaten Safari! That's like saying toddlers prefer broccoli to caviar.

And remember, this isn't in one of the major European economies where Macs can compete with commodity PCs. It's in Ukraine! I've got nothing against Ukraine. It's the motherland my family fled as fast as they could 100 years ago. But we've been fleeing from one country to the next ever since the diaspora. I recently found out that my last name actually might have Turkish roots (so it's not Americanized Russian, but an Americanization of the Russianization of the name we picked up before fleeing north from Turkey). But I digress...

One of the characteristics of Macs that people criticize is their price. And it's not like the economy in Ukraine is such that Macs would be flying off the shelves. But even those Ukranians who have gone the Mac route have a range of alternatives to Safari: Firefox, Camino, Opera's non-mobile version... Many Americans I know who have Macs prefer Firefox. I'm not saying that Safari's bad. It gets the job done. But the only people I know who would fervently claim it the best browser on Earth are defenders of the one true faith, one nation under Jobs, with hipness and Kool Aid for all.

So is the fact that Opera's mobile browser is getting 50% more use than Safari in Ukraine statistically significant? When that 50% margin represents 1 out of every 1,000 web page views... in Ukraine... not really.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 24th, 2007 at 1:31 am and is filed under Techno Thoughts, Technology & Life.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.