
Mobile browser traffic is 2X bigger than app traffic, and growing faster - AnbeSivam
http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/25/wait-what-mobile-browser-traffic-is-2x-bigger-than-app-traffic-and-growing-faster/
======
mnem
What the report is based on: a median value selected from the traffic to 42 of
the top US websites (it ignores those which don't have both and app and a
website) from data provided by Comscore.

The term "traffic" is never defined. Web requests? Quantity of data
transferred? Both of those would have significantly shapes depending on
whether the client was a browser or an app.

It's also interesting to note that the top 10 "Browser Reach Advantage"
websites are basically text based websites - news sites, wikipedia and blogs.

Things I learned from the report: the top website (with 207.0x Browser Reach
Advantage) Blogger has an app.

~~~
Encosia
The y-axis is labeled "Unique Visitors".

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no_gravity
The difference between web and app is trust.

A website has write access to my screen, my speakers and my internet
connection. Plus limited read access. To keyboard, mouse, device orientation
etc. Other rights can be granted (location, cookies etc). It can do all this
only as long as it's "open".

An app usually has read/write access to large parts of my device. The whole
sd-card, raw internet access, the camera, the microphone, ask me for money
etc. And it can keep doing so even when it's "closed".

We will see the two converge. Websites will have more rights they can ask for.
Apps will be better to tame.

But trust will keep being the differentiator and they will keep co-existing.
There is friendship and there is marriage. Both have their use case.

~~~
arrrg
That is such a nerdy perspective, totally stuck in the filter bubble.

I don’t think that explains the difference at all. I think it’s about
convenience. People don’t want to use apps for the diverse things they do on
the web all the time. Apps may be convenient if you use them frequently (and
then only marginally, especially with improving speeds and more people paying
attention to making websites usable on phones), but if you use something not
so often?

~~~
LoSboccacc
poeple especially don't need apps of 150mb+ each, and premium phones come with
limited storage forcing costly upgrades on top of an hefty price.

the only competitive advantage for apps is push notifications, and the sooner
browsers and phones can build that into a standard the better (including
opening the right page when clicking on a specific service notification)

~~~
jzzskijj
The other thing is privacy. I don't want to give every service a "full access"
into my phone. At least I have a feeling, that my privacy is in better hands,
if I access services using up-to-date mobile browser (or Tinfoil for Facebook)
instead of a native app running on my phone.

Looking at the ridiculous number of permissions different apps would require
to run on my (Android) phone, using mobile site of the most of the services
seems safer choice. Android 6.0 may change this with switchable permissions,
tho.

~~~
andrepd
I remember having switchable permissions since 4.3. Did something change in
the meantime?

~~~
tdkl
AppOps got canned since 4.4 in AOSP and are coming back in 6.0.

~~~
andrepd
It went away in 4.4 but I have it again on 5.0. I had to use Xposed to get it
to work on 4.4 but now it's on again by default. I see people complaining it's
not present in 5.0, though. Strange...

------
unKlever
For years it has been obvious that the web would beat apps in aggregate, but
apps would have better engagement. If you wrap your website in an app using
ionic and treat it like a standard site no one will use it. While soneon has
noted trust (which is true) it is also fir convenience. The browser is a great
app and can run many apps in parralel while quickly shifting between them, it
is CONVENIENCE as mych as trust.

If your app does mot extensively make use of the hardware and can be run as a
website, it has no business being an app. This is obvious, being proved now,
and the app craze will pivot from shit-tier websites in iOS clothing to things
that add real value and interface directly with the phones hardware because
they need to provide security, access to a protocol, or leverage hatdware
(accelerometer, camera, Bluetooth, etc)

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vbezhenar
I believe that mobile browser will beat apps, like it did on desktop. Mobile
browsers were unusable, sites were not mobile-friendly, devices were slow with
tiny screens. Now those factors change and browsing websites on modern
smartphone is much more usable. And it's likely that we will see shift from
mobile apps to mobile websites in the near future.

~~~
bottled_poe
>like it did on desktop

It's pretty great that this happened. I'm so sick of using these pesky desktop
applications. Just remind me, which web apps can I use for the following?

-Audio production

-3D animation

-Video editing

-CAD design

-Writing/debugging software

~~~
nl
Audio production: [https://soundation.com/](https://soundation.com/)

3D animation: [https://clara.io/](https://clara.io/)

Video Editing: [https://www.wevideo.com/](https://www.wevideo.com/)

CAD design: [https://www.tinkercad.com/](https://www.tinkercad.com/)

Writing/debugging software: [https://codenvy.com/](https://codenvy.com/)

Now of course I expect we'll here the "but it misses feature X". I'm sure
that's true. Next, someone will point out that generally, 80% of people don't
need feature X, and the fact that it is online means it is many times more
accessible. We've seen this over and over again.

Remember when everyone thought web based _email_ couldn't possibly work for
them because of feature Z? I'm sure that's still true, for a few people.

So can we skip that whole discussion?

But I don't know if the message we should get out of this is that the web
wins, or than new ways of distributing functionality to more people cheaper
wins.

~~~
bottled_poe
Let's be clear - I was never suggesting the the web can't beat native. The op
was stating that the days of native are behind us. It is strictly untrue.

> Remember when everyone thought web based email couldn't possibly work for
> them because of feature Z?

No, I've always used web-based email clients. Did a software developer really
say this?

~~~
pjc50
Back in the early days of webmail, when IE6 was new and we had 28.8k modems,
someone almost certainly said that. 20 years ago we used Eudora, PINE,
Netscape's mail client, or (if you were really unfortunate) Outlook Express.

~~~
tluyben2
Pine -> Mutt -> Webmail for me. Those desktop clients were(are?) horrible. For
iPhone/iPad I do like Inbox though.

~~~
marcosdumay
POP was horrible, IMAP made things much better, but the web clients had
already won.

A modern desktop client is much better than a modern webmail client when it's
available. It's interesting that desktop clients have been continualy
improving, while web clients have been continualy getting worse.

Anyway, both have their use.

------
kombine
Isn't it because the browser loads user interface and code all the time (sure,
there's caching, but still), while apps only load data?

~~~
ndesaulniers
This year, browsers are implementing the Service Worker spec [0] which is a
major improvement to the previous App Cache spec [1]. Both could be used to
load UI (and all other static assets) when offline.

There are also numerous headers for describing TTL for downloaded assets, and
APIs for offline storage (localStorage, indexedDB).

I think the main differences are that while the web has these capabilities,
you don't get them for free. You do have to go out of your way to use them.
Usually, they're developed assuming an Internet connection, then made to work
offline. Usually, it's the other way around for native apps.

[0] [http://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/](http://www.w3.org/TR/service-
workers/) [1]
[http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/browsers.html#a...](http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/browsers.html#appcache)

------
tomp
> The problem is terminology and the exact focus of each study. Morgan
> Stanley’s study [browser > app] is focused on unique visitors — calling it,
> somewhat misleadingly, “traffic” — while comScore’s report [app > browser]
> is focused on actual user time spent.

Explains the surprising result.

------
coob
Apps use less data than mobile web sites - API's over full HTML/CSS/JS stacks.
When a web page on a modern news site can be ~20MB, this news is no surprise.

~~~
partiallypro
I don't know what news site you're visiting...in any case, this is about
unique visits, not bandwidth consumption.

------
pbreit
These reports never clarify how they count browser use embedded in apps,
notably Facebook and Twitter.

------
kukabynd
Most popular used apps/platforms nowadays are not related to hardware
(Facebook, Twitter, Medium). Chances are, your product isn’t too.

The only thing annoying me in mobile browser experience is the UI. For
example, Safari on iOS. Let’s hide URL bar and get rid of back/forwards
buttons in favour of using gestures 100%. Then, most of websites will be
perceived as apps for majority of users anyway.

By moving to native we officially obey corporations to control our products
and it’s surely not the way to go.

------
DavideNL
Doesn't browser traffic also contain more ads and tracking stuff...? (which
also contributes to 'more data')

~~~
out_of_protocol
Nope - that traffic is not "bytes" but "Unique visitors". Misleading label,
yes

------
lamby
> The difference between web and app is trust.

Hm, do you really think this is a mainstream concern that is driving this?

------
chetanahuja
It's a ridiculous to call the metric measured by this study "Traffic". All
it's counting is "unique user's as counted" on all the websites.

So while I'm scrolling through twitter app on my phone, I might click on about
20-30 random links (most of which open in the browser), take a quick look and
swipe away the tab. According to this study, I just presented myself as
"Unique User" on 20-30 sites. All the while, I'm simply browsing twitter.

So according the methodology of this study, I just generated 30x the "web
traffic" as compared to my app traffic. It's a patently ridiculous way of
measuring mobile usage.

------
gozo
Uhm. I would say it's more notable that 1/3 of mobile traffic is seemingly
under the control of a few companies. If you were ever concerned about the
openess of the Internet, this is it.

------
will_critchlow
I'm pretty suspicious of the data and the analysis in this study - even though
I "like" some of the conclusions. I wrote a post about it here:
[https://www.distilled.net/resources/5-things-that-make-me-
su...](https://www.distilled.net/resources/5-things-that-make-me-suspicious-
of-morgan-stanleys-report-on-apps-vs-mobile-web/)

Hope someone finds it useful.

------
Animats
No, it's not "growing faster". Numbers from the article:

    
    
        2013: 1.8x
        2014: 1.7x
        2015: 2.1x
    

Get two up years in a row, and maybe there's a trend. You could get that much
increase from increased bloat on a few key sites' home pages.

------
natch
Probably a lot of this is Android users, who can't trust apps.

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ck2
and bot traffic is 80% of your entire site traffic

~~~
natch
and 80% of unique visitors too (not sarcasm).

------
PaulHoule
One of my pet peeves are the sites like LinkedIn and scribd that push you hard
to install a c-rap. If at all possible I prefer to browse desktop sites on my
tablet father than mobile sites that assume I have sold my firstborn son to
Verizon in exchange for the right to breath through a straw in places where
Verizon feels like providing service.

------
merb
Fastest growing, yeah... [https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

And also Traffic says nothing about usage. I mean a Browser needs to download
more things than any App will do, thats why Apps are used so heavily. the only
statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I've only read the headline, but it claims mobile traffic (whatever that
means) is both larger and faster growing, which renders the xkcd strip
irrelevant since the two religions are competing on only one of those.

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sidcool
Flipkart needs to take a heed.

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rasputhin
Only 2x? I thought it would be much higher

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hewhowhineth
Web for the win!

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1971genocide
I find is to so much easier to just type out the URL of what app I need -
facebook, reddit, youtube, etc -

Its just faster to let google auto-complete then having to browse my own phone
for the app that I need.

typing the letter "f" is faster than exiting the browser and using my OWN EYES
to browse left to right row by row the apps on my phone. How cave-manish.

~~~
gkoberger
On the iPhone, it's easy to search for an app with a quick swipe down.

As for cavemanish, some might argue "clicking a large icon" is less cavemanish
than having to resort to something as unnatural as a keyboard.

~~~
rimantas
And in iOS 9 you get Siri suggestions, so most likely you won't even need to
type anything.

