comScore has unveiled Device Essentials, a new service reporting on digital traffic by device, which includes computers and other devices, defined as mobile phones, tablets, music players, e-readers, gaming devices, and other web-enabled devices.
Based on comScore’s global Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) data, which utilises census-level information from tagged web page content, Device Essentials includes comScore’s first publicly-available data, showing device activity globally by connection type and device category.
“comScore is excited to announce the availability of Device Essentials to provide critical insight into traffic patterns sourcing from the wide array of devices today,” says Serge Matta, comScore’s executive vice president of Telecom and Wireless. “Using comScore’s proprietary global UDM data set, we have been able to develop an expansive profile of traffic patterns across device type, connection type and geography, which delivers the critical insight needed by wireless carriers, OEMs, publishers and app developers to optimize their marketing strategies and customer experience.”
comScore Device Essentials will initially report exclusively on page view activity, and is immediately available across all of comScore’s reporting geographies. The company says the number of different reporting dimensions available in the service provides answers to a variety of digital business questions.Reporting capabilities include, but are not limited to, the following: 
- Share of smartphone and feature phone usage by OS
- Carrier share of smartphone traffic
- OS share of carrier traffic
- Traffic to site content categories by carrier, OS and device type
- Mobile HTML vs. standard HTML traffic by content by device type
- Wi-fi vs. non-wi-fi traffic
The photograph to the left (click to enlarge) shows an analysis of traffic to websites across 13 countries, sourced from various devices. The figures reveal that the iPad is currently the dominant tablet device across all geographies, contributing more than 89 per cent of tablet traffic across all markets. The iPad’s contribution to total non-computer device traffic is highest in Canada (33.5 per cent). Brazil has the second highest non-computer device share of traffic coming from the iPad at 31.8 per cent, although non-computer devices account for less than 1 per cent of total traffic in the country. In Singapore, where non-computer devices comprise nearly 6 per cent of total traffic, the iPad accounts for 26.2 per cent of this traffic.
Interestingly, while Android tablets significantly lag behind Apple in the US tablet market, the platform actually beats Apple in the smartphone space (35.6 per cent vs. 23.5 per cent). iPod Touches contribute a notable percentage of non-computer device traffic across most countries, while other devices such as e-readers and gaming systems contribute only a very modest percentage.
There’s more information about Device Essentials here.
