Job Searching: Impact of Browsers Across the U.S.
Employment and job searching have long been hot topics in our world, and more and more jobs are being found and acquired through online searches. It has been found that the unemployed persons who look for work online are reemployed 25 percent faster than the comparable workers who do not search online. Leveraging its extensive network of online sites, Chitika wanted to analyze how job searching rates varied by location, as well as if a person’s likelihood to search for jobs online was influenced by their browser choice.
With rave reviews of HTC’s newest smartphone, the HTC One, continuing to populate the Web, some analysts are predicting the device will dramatically improve the company’s long-term prospects after several years of receding market share. HTC’s most prominent competitor within the North American Android marketplace, Samsung, also recently released its own new smartphone model, the Samsung Galaxy S IV. With both Samsung and HTC largely eyeing the same target market, Chitika Insights looked to explore the initial adoption rates of both devices to quantify the early market progress of each smartphone.
Samsung Electronics held its earnings call on Friday, April 26th, 2013. The Korean manufacturer had already posted its earnings guidance in advance of the call, sporting a quarter-over-quarter 50% growth in operating profit, and $40 billion growth in revenues since last year – both beating analyst estimates. With the tablet market being a high growth sector for both Samsung and chief rival Apple going forward, Chitika Insights looked to compare each company’s share of the overall marketplace over the past six months.
The mobile marketplace continues to grow as tablets become increasingly popular for their functionality, convenience, and portability. As part of its monthly update on the subject, Chitika Insights examined the current distribution of Web usage among leading tablet devices at the conclusion of March 2013. For comparative purposes, tablet usage shares are all mapped against shares observed over the previous three months.
BlackBerry 10, the latest operating system from BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, is the company’s most ambitious attempt to match the functionality of Apple- and Google-powered smartphones after years of receding market share. The operating system made its Canadian debut on February 5th, 2013 in the form of the full-touch BlackBerry Z10 – one of two BlackBerry 10 smartphones unveiled as part of the operating system’s launch event on January 30th. The Z10 then made its U.S. debut on the AT&T network March 22nd, 2013, before subsequent roll outs to Verizon and T-Mobile in the following weeks. To get a view into the operating system’s initial progress, Chitika Insights conducted a study examining the BlackBerry Z10’s impact on North American BlackBerry Web usage in the days since its release. 
Windows 8’s relatively tepid rate of adoption has been well documented, but with institutional contracts being a sizable portion of Microsoft’s PC business as a whole, the Chitika Insights team looked to examine how Windows 8 was faring on college campuses. Using the top 50 universities as ranked by U.S. News and World Report in 2013, Chitika Insights then re-ranked the schools by the percentage of Web traffic identified as coming from desktop computers running Windows 8 through the ISP associated with that university.
By analyzing search volume in the three days since the teams were decided on March 31, 2013, Chitika Insights looked to quantify the search interest for each team in the 2013 NCAA Final Four.
In late August 2012, Chitika Insights observed Web traffic from OS X Mountain Lion users constituting more than 10% of all Mac-based Web traffic a month following its release. At that time, Mac developers were dealing with a decidedly fragmented operating system (OS) environment, with users of four separate OS versions each generating around 10% of Mac Web traffic or more. Now nearly seven months later, Chitika Insights examined the current distribution of Web usage from Mac OS X users.
Late 2012 and early 2013 has revealed an important shift in Internet usage trends that will, undoubtedly, significantly impact online publishers in the coming months.
Recent analyst estimates point to mobile Internet usage overtaking desktop-based Web traffic as early as 2014. This isn’t a tremendous surprise. With smartphones, users have become accustomed to immediate communication and ubiquitous Web access, and with the advent of higher data speeds, users get a broadband-type Web experience via their mobile phone. Moreover, easy accessibility and portability of mobile devices supports their usage around the clock. With mobile having made Web browsing a truly 24-hour affair, Chitika Insights wanted to quantify mobile and desktop usage as a function of hour of the day.
