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In brief: Cloudflare has published its annual year in review, and it's more of the same across multiple core categories. Global Internet traffic increased yet again, and several key players including Google, OpenAI, Binance, WhatsApp, and Facebook maintained their position at the top of their respective industries.
Cloudflare's fifth annual year in review noted a 17.2 percent increase in global Internet traffic in 2024. Like last year, growth was limited through mid-August then began to accelerate consistently through the end of November. Interestingly enough, outages are also clearly visible when plotting the data on a graph.
Turning to mobile, it is no surprise that more than two-thirds of mobile traffic originated from Android devices. Platform traffic varies by region, but it's worth highlighting that Android had a greater than 90 percent share of mobile traffic in more than 25 regions / countries.
Cloudflare noted high levels of Android usage in Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh, which have lower levels of gross national income per capita compared to other regions. In Denmark, where Apple's platform reigns supreme, iOS mobile device traffic share peaked at 66 percent.
Overall, more than 40 percent of global Internet traffic originates from mobile devices. That is a pretty remarkable shift considering mobile Internet connectivity was hardly even a blip on the radar just 15 short years ago.
Elsewhere, it was another successful year for Google as the tech titan held strong as the most popular Internet service thanks to a sizable portfolio of leading consumer products. Facebook, Apple, TikTok, and Amazon rounded out the top five most popular service providers, in that order.
Another interesting nugget from Cloudflare's report is the fact that traffic from SpaceX's Starlink satellite Internet service nearly tripled in 2024. In the US alone, Starlink traffic grew more than 2.5x and in Brazil, it shot up over 17x. SpaceX will eventually have some serious competition in the space from competitors like Amazon but for now, they are a leading player.
Image credit: Leon Siebert
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