Happy New Year to all of our readers, we hope you all had fun celebrating. There’s a lot to look forward to in 2018, and we can safely say that most Xperia fans are probably anticipating what design changes Sony will make to this year’s range. Sony continued to make some great smartphones in 2017, but many of these phones were overlooked as their design appeared stale in a year where the lack of bezels really dominated.
Before we get there, it is somewhat of a tradition for us to provide some site statistics on the trends we saw on Xperia Blog over the past year. As always, thank you for the great support over the year, and for keeping our inboxes full of tips. Please do not hesitate to get in touch in 2018, whether it be for tips, or any way in which to improve the site.
2017 Xperia Blog readership statistics
Top countries by readership
The majority of our readership comes from India, which sustains its number one position. The continued lack of marketing for Xperia smartphones in the United States, has taken its toll on its readership position, after being firmly in second spot for a number of years. The US slips to third place, with the UK leapfrogging it.
The rest of the countries are broadly the same as last year, but we’ve seen some new entrants into the top 15 this year, including Mexico, Taiwan and Singapore, who have jumped a number of places versus last year.
Readership by Mobile Devices
Readership by desktop has been dropping rapidly for a number of years now. However, the decline in 2017 was more modest, with desktop representing 50% of visits, compared to 52% in the previous year. Mobile represents 46%, up two percentage points, with tablet usage remaining at 4%.
It will not be a surprise given that we are a niche Xperia focused blog, that just under two-thirds of our readership comes from Sony devices. The top three is rounded out by Apple and Samsung devices as it has in previous years. What is most interesting though is when looking at the lower places, Xiaomi and Huawei smartphones have overtaken the 4th and 5th positions that were occupied by Google and LG smartphones last year, highlighting the rise of the Chinese brands.
We thought it would be interesting to break this down one-step further to show you the actual most popular devices that people used to browse the site during 2017. The Xperia Z5 was clearly the most popular device during the year, with the Xperia XZ in second place and the Xperia Z5 Compact in third. What struck us was how popular the Xperia Z3 and Z2 devices continued to be, sitting at 6th and 7th positions respectively.
What the above doesn’t really capture is some of the newer phones, as they wouldn’t be in the wild, as much as the older handsets throughout the whole year. Therefore, we also looked at how this data looked as we exit 2017 – taking the numbers from the month of December 2017 only. Here we can see that the Xperia XZ Premium is the most popular device, with the Xperia XZ remaining popular at number two, and Xperia X taking third place. The newer Xperia XZ1 and XZ1 Compact also make a decent appearance here, taking 6th and 11th spots. Once again, the Xperia Z3 and Z2 phones still remain popular, keeping within the top 15. Looks like there’s a number of diehard fans not giving up on their old handsets just yet.
| 2017 | December 2017 |
|---|---|
| 1. Xperia Z5 2. Xperia XZ 3. Xperia Z5 Compact 4. Apple iPhone 5. Xperia X 6. Xperia Z3 7. Xperia Z2 8. Xperia Z5 Premium 9. Xperia XZ Premium 10. Xperia Z3+ 11. Apple iPad 12. Xperia XA 13. Xperia Z3 Compact 14. Xperia X Compact 15. Xperia X Performance | 1. Xperia XZ Premium 2. Xperia XZ 3. Xperia X 4. Apple iPhone 5. Xperia Z5 6. Xperia XZ1 7. Xperia X Compact 8. Apple iPad 9. Xperia Z5 Compact 10. Xperia Z3 11. Xperia XZ1 Compact 12. Xperia Z2 13. Xperia Z5 Premium 14. Xperia X Performance 15. Xperia Z3+ |
Readership by Browser
Chrome continues to be the most popular browser to access the site. You can see the data below from 2012 to 2017, which shows Chrome accounting for 70% of visits in 2017, the same as 2016. Firefox remains the second favourite, with 10% of visits in 2017, although it has been on a downward trend for a while.
Most read stories in 2017 (by number of Pageviews)
The following posts were the most read during 2017. The most read posts mainly relate to guides to installing software using Flashtool and XperiFirm and the big new software releases for Xperia devices. Many of you were also interested to get a first glimpse of the Xperia XZ1 and XZ Premium devices.
1. Install Xperia Marshmallow using Flashtool and XperiFirm [Guide]
2. FlashTool version 0.9.18.1 allows you to download Xperia firmware files
3. New Flashtool (0.9.19.1) brings compatibility to all Xperia devices
4. Guide to installing Xperia Lollipop using XperiFirm and Flashtool
5. Sony Xperia XZ1 – First press pictures
6. Android Nougat rollout re-starts for Xperia Z5, Z3 Plus and Z4 Tablet (32.3.A.0.376)
7. Android Nougat now rolling for Xperia Z5 family (32.3.A.0.372)
8. Create your own FTF firmware files using XperiFirm and FlashTool [Guide]
9. Android 7.1.1 now seeding for Xperia Z5 family, Z4 Tablet and Z3 Plus (32.4.A.0.160)
10. Xperia XZ Premium – Check out the first picture
Social Media
For us it is important that you can access our content by whichever means suits you. As things stand you can subscribe to our feeds on RSS or via email (sign up in the box on the sidebar). We also have feeds of all the major social media players. As a measure of posterity, we include our follower counts below as at 31st December 2017.
Facebook page likes: 40,003
Google+ page followers: 63,132
Twitter follower count: 70,616
