Global shipments of tablets hit an all-time high at 26.8 million units in Q4 2011, and Android snagged a substantial piece of the pie. Last quarter, Android snagged 39.1% of the market share, a 10% increase from Q4 2010 where they only had 29% of the market share.

Shipments of Android tablets more than tripled year-over-year from 3.1 million to 10.5 million.

Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “Android captured a record 39 percent share of global tablet shipments in Q4 2011, rising from 29 percent a year earlier. Global Android tablet shipments tripled annually to 10.5 million units. Dozens of Android models distributed across multiple countries by numerous brands such as Amazon, Samsung, Asus and others have been driving volumes. Android is so far proving relatively popular with tablet manufacturers despite nagging concerns about fragmentation of Android’s operating system, user-interface and app store ecosystem.”

As you can see, Apple still maintained a strong lead in tablet sales, more than doubling their shipments in the last year. They did lose about 10% of market share to Android OS, however, falling to 57.6% worldwide.

Apple’s shipment numbers are made even more impressive when you learn one little caveat of this study. The Android sales numbers refer to “sell-in” figures, meaning they include “sales” to retailers. Those may of may not actually translate to sales to customers. The Apple number (15.43 million) refers to actual sales to customers, not just iPads and iPad 2s that were shipped to be sold.

But on the flip side, the study doesn’t include e-readers, even ones like the Nook Color that straddle the line between e-reader and tablet (and operate on Android OS).

When you see reports like this, it’s always amazing that Apple is able to maintain such a hold on market share with basically one device (split into two forms). Are you warming up to Android OS tablets? Or do you think that iPads are still the king? Let us know in the comments.

Apple’s stock rose nearly six percent in midday trading according to the Mercury News. This put their individual stock price at $445.29 which put their market cap at $415 billion. Exxon’s share price was down one percet at $86.52 per share with a market cap of $414 billion.

The two companies have been battling all day back and forth for the top spot in market value. There has only been $1 billion standing between them for most of the day.

This new momentum for Apple has some shareholders hoping that Apple will use it massive reserves of cash to pay investors back in the form of a dividend. Reuters reports that Apple, which last paid a dividend in 1995, is “actively discussing” the cash balance but didn’t have anything to announce.

“We do believe the company should examine a meaningful dividend closely and are intrigued by the possibilities around any sizeable acquisitions that could improve its wireless and online services,” Barclays Capital wrote in a note to clients, according to Reuters.

Apple’s success has also improved the outlook for the company’s suppliers, Broadcom and TriQuint, according to Fox Business.

As of right now, Apple’s stocks are selling for $447.45 per share and Exxon’s are selling for $86.54 per share. Apple’s market value is staying steady at $415 billion and Exxon’s is staying at $414 billion.

The prices can and will fluctuate over the day, but we can call it as of now that Apple is once again the number one most valuable company in the world.

In the United Kingdom, Google Chrome has positioned itself has the second most popular browser, replacing the browser that should be given credit for providing an honest-to-goodness alternative to Internet Explorer. Granted, there are other browsers besides Chrome and Firefox — waves at a still-satisfying Opera platform — but these two represent the true competition to IE, but it was Firefox who came along when the void needed filling, a fact that takes nothing away from Google Chrome’s success and capability.

The quality of Google’s browser helps fuel its growth, which, again, has made it the second most popular browser in the land of lavish Royal Weddings and quality pints of beer. According to a report by StatCounter, Chrome captured 22 percent of UK’s web traffic, edging out its Mozilla competitor. Furthermore, the success of both Chrome and Firefox has had a severe impact in IE’s market share:

The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that Chrome took 22.1% of the UK market, up from 3.9% in July 2009. In the same period Microsoft’s Internet Explorer fell significantly from 61% to 46% globally and Firefox dropped slightly from 27% to 22%.

With only 45 percent of the market in the UK, it’s becoming pretty clear that many IE users do so because it’s the only browser that comes installed on a Windows box. Once users become more experienced with their Internet travels, alternative choices when it comes to browsing are being made. No doubt, the influence of some geek friends they have and/or make play a part here too.

Peer pressure works, even when it comes to web browsing. That said, Firefox’s five percent drop is significant as well. If the peer pressure theory has any bearing, apparently, Firefox is as cool as it once was.

In their report, The Guardian quotes Lars Bak, a lead Chrome engineer, who credits Chrome’s speed for its success:

“Speed is a fundamental part of it, but it’s also about the minimal design and the way it handles security. If you as a user try [to load] a webpage and it feels snappy, it’s really hard to go back. It has shown that people spend more time interacting with the web.”

It would be interesting to see just how many people would use Internet Explorer if, when they purchased a new computer, they had a choice of browsers instead of just the default choice that is IE.

The past few years, IE has steadily lost ground to the likes of Mozilla’s Firefox and Google Chrome. In 2007, IE controlled 80% of the market. The latest reports have them sitting at 57%.

Simplistic interfaces, faster load times, better security, have all been reasons behind IE losing ground. It appears Microsoft has remedied many of these problems, and reviews have pointed out these improvements.

PCMagazine gave IE9 a 4/5 rating, saying this of the browser, “Microsoft’s new browser is faster, trimmer, more compliant with HTML5—a major improvement over its predecessor. It also brings some unique capabilities like tab-pinning and hardware acceleration, but only Windows 7 and Vista users need apply.”

Unfortunately I’m unable to provide my own thoughts as I’m on a Mac computer at this time. If you have a Windows computer and use XP, you’ll be left out in the cold as well.

While it has a small window of platforms for which it’s available, IE9 has these improvements listed on their product page: pinned sites (for Windows 7 users), tracking protection, InPrivate browsing, HTML5 compatibility, and more.

One feature I’m excited to see in motion is how IE9 will share the burden of graphics rendering with the GPU on more graphic intensive websites. HTML5 is supposed to push the capabilities of graphics integration, and being the go-to browser for this integration could be a strong investment for the browser’s future.

Firefox 4 will release next Tuesday; this version has been in beta since July 2010. The release certainly will provide IE9 with some staunch competition out of the gate. In a couple of weeks it will be interesting to see how the pieces of market share will be divided up. Many have switched to Google Chrome as well, providing a third option in the market.

Has anyone had the opportunity to use IE9 yet? If so, are the improvements as great as many reviewers have been letting on? Or are you still waiting for Firefox 4?

The stats come courtesy of Net Applications, and according to the organization, Internet Explorer remained very much on top of the Web browser pile in December with a market share of 62.69 percent.  Unsurprisingly, Firefox placed second, with a share of 24.61 percent.

Then came the changeup.  Chrome was fourth in November, but with a market share of 4.63 percent, secured third place during December.  And Safari’s market share of 4.46 percent was only enough for fourth place during the same month.

Assuming the two browsers don’t reverse course in January, this is a significant development.  Chrome’s only been around for about 16 months, after all, and Safari’s had something like six years to make friends.

Count on Google maintaining or increasing its promotion of Chrome since the current approach has worked so well.  It’s possible that Apple will try to fight back and upgrade Safari in response to Chrome for Mac, too.

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Once various versions are taken into consideration, the total comes to exactly 19.03 percent, according to new data from the Market Share research firm.  Since the same company arrived at 18.41 percent in May, the new figure represents a nice growth spurt.  Firefox can sort of thank Download Day 2008 for that rise.

 Web Browser Market Shares
(Photo Credit: Marketshare.com)

However, Market Share points out, "Firefox 3.0 share gains came mostly from users upgrading from Firefox 2.0," so the event may not have drawn many real newcomers.

There’s also the problem of 20 percent to consider.  When May’s statistics were released, Firefox appeared capable of hitting the mark in July.  Since the month including all the Firefox 3.0 hoopla only saw an increase of 0.62 percent, that goal’s looking less achievable.

Firefox hasn’t been pitted against any do-or-die schedules, though, so maybe fans can just enjoy slow ride.

In following the search industry, we appreciated Compete’s entry into the mix. Their site provides a well-crafted way of quickly looking at one or more websites, and comparing them by various metrics.

Compete branched out into tracking search market share, providing a monthly comparison of who’s gathering what percentages. Google easily tops this list month after month, with Yahoo and Microsoft trailing in second and third place.

Yahoo’s position has dwindled by Compete’s assessment over the course of a year. As it turns out, it decreased far more than mathematically correct, Danny Sullivan pointed out at Search Engine Land.

A reader at Search Engine Land pointed out that the regular expressions (regex) posted by Compete, which they use to cull search data out of the web traffic information they gather, cause a miscount of Yahoo’s share.

Compete later acknowledged a problem with the regex they used to gather Yahoo’s search share. Sullivan posted a list of what the revised figures will look like: Google at 67 percent, Yahoo at 18.6 percent, MSN/Live including Club Live at 9.9 percent.

If anything, the figures demonstrate the potential gain Microsoft could realize, should they come back to the negotiating table and acquire Yahoo. Doing so would virtually triple their search market share, a change that has to be worth billions to the company.

As it always is, Google topped a measurement of search engine market share. This time the numbers comes from Compete and its regular blogging about monthly search numbers.

Looking at May 2008 and bundling in Microsoft’s Club Live traffic for comparison, Google picked up 71.5 percent of the US search market in May 2008. Yahoo earned 13.3 percent, a drop from Compete’s April measure of 13.8 percent.

MSN/Live handled 10.6 percent in May. Although that represented a dropoff in traffic from April, it also meant a year over year gain from May 2007′s 8.1 percent. Out of the top five US search engines, Microsoft and Google were the only year over year gainers.

Compete’s Jeremy Crane wondered when Google would hit the 75 percent mark in search market share. Google enjoyed solid gains in search volume. We’re going to suggest Google hits that three-quarter mark in September, once students are back in school and performing lots of homework-helping queries each day.

Good news for Yahoo by way of analytics firm Compete: they cited 14.8 percent market share for Yahoo for last month.

It’s been a year since Yahoo held close to 20 percent of the US search market by Compete’s reckoning. Their share gyrated up and down from April to August 2007, when Yahoo held 18.8 percent. From September 2007 on, Yahoo’s share declined bit by bit for the next few months.

After Compete recorded a low of 14.5 percent for Yahoo search share in March 2008, they cited a rise for Yahoo in April, finally reversing the downward spiral.

“Yahoo! query volumes increased roughly 1.3% to push market share up to 14.8%. Maybe that Microhoo press got a lot of people yodeling after all,” Compete’s Jeremy Crane said.

Whatever caused Yahoo’s rise, it wasn’t at Google’s expense. The dominant search ad company picked up 68.9 percent of the search market in April 2008. A dropoff in queries at Microsoft’s Club Live nearly mirrors the total gain by Google and Yahoo last month.

...public indicators suggest that Yahoo!

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