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An early test of the GDPR: taking on data brokers
Major data brokers Acxiom and Oracle are among seven companies accused of violating GDPR laws on personal information privacy. Advocates hope the complaints will shed light on the opaque ways that personal data is traded through third parties online both in the EU and the US. The General Data Protection Regulation is a sweeping personal data privacy law that came into force in late May in the EU. For the rest of the world, it's viewed as a bellwether for whether Big Tech can be held in check when immense data leaks seem to happen with painful regularity.
Android accounts for one-quarter of mobile web traffic, says Quantcast
It's terribly difficult to get reliable statistics, as numbers tend to vary drastically depending upon whom you ask, but if you're inclined to believe that Android is mopping up Apple and RIM's declining mobile mindshare in the US, you'll find nothing but corroboration from Quantcast. The analytics firm reckons a full one-quarter of mobile web traffic stateside comes from devices running Google's OS, though it's important to know that the iOS tallies apparently don't include the web-friendly iPad. You also might want to note that this is mobile web traffic here -- these days, we spend an increasing amount of our internet time in apps -- and since we're on a roll with the disclaimers, let's just add that these numbers have nothing to do with a company's financial success. Nokia can attest to that.
Quantcast: Apple share of OS growing while Microsoft shrinks slightly
Research released today indicates that in North America, Apple's Mac OS X is gaining traction, while the Windows share of the OS market is shrinking ever so slightly. That's the report from Quantcast, a company that measures and analyzes web traffic. They say that the market share for Mac OS X is up 7% from December to January. Microsoft held steady for the last 3 months of 2009 with the release of Windows 7, but started a slow decline again in January. According to Quantcast, Apple has a 10.9% North American share as of January, while Windows has 86.8%. An interesting note is that the largest group of users is on Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6, while Windows XP dominates on the Microsoft side. Apple's relative share in North America is up 29.4 % in a year, while Windows share is down 3.8%. These figures measure web consumption, so if you're not web connected your OS choice doesn't count. Quantcast measures ad supported sites, so huge traffic sites like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others don't supply statistics.
Millions of app store downloads everywhere
Last year was a big one for mobile downloads, according to a number of sources. A Quantcast mobile trends report says that mobile web activity grew 110% in the US throughout 2009, and of course Apple was responsible for most of that, with a 65% market share, 41% from the iPhone and the rest from the iPod touch. Apple's market share slightly dropped in 2009 (due to increasing competition), but it's still head and shoulders above everyone else. App downloads are huge as well. Not only did Apple announce that three billion downloads, but Gameloft says they've reached 10 million paid downloads of apps by themselves, and developer Lima Sky (makers of Doodle Jump, one of our favorite games of 2009), says downloads skyrocketed after Christmas, with over 500,000 downloads of their app in December of 2009 alone. The App Store is doing big business lately -- it's probably a safe bet to say that 2009 kicked off a golden age of mobile web activity. And all indications are that 2010 will be even more interesting.
