Cloudflare Releases 2024 Annual Review: Over 40% of Global Internet Traffic Comes from Mobile Devices

Cloudflare, a leading network service provider, recently published its 2024 annual review. Utilizing its vast data resources, Cloudflare has created an Internet map that serves as a reference for the industry.

Overall, there were no significant changes in several core categories/industries compared to previous years. Giants like Google, OpenAI, Binance, WhatsApp, and Facebook continued to dominate their respective markets.

Statistics reveal that global Internet traffic increased by 17.2% in 2024, following similar patterns seen in previous years: a modest growth in traffic until mid-August, followed by a gradual increase, with a significant acceleration from the end of November.

On the mobile Internet front, over 40% of global Internet traffic now originates from mobile devices. Although not surpassing the 50% mark yet, achieving a 40% share within 15 years since mobile Internet began gaining attention is quite remarkable.

The source of mobile Internet traffic has also remained consistent with previous years. Apple’s iOS and iPadOS devices account for one-third of the traffic, while Google's Android commands two-thirds. Traffic distribution also varies by region.

For instance, in 25 countries and regions, Android accounts for over 90% of mobile Internet traffic, leaving only 10% for iOS and iPadOS.

In regions like Papua New Guinea and Bangladesh, where the per capita national income is lower, Android usage is exceptionally high. Conversely, in Denmark, where Apple leads, iOS mobile devices account for 66% of the traffic.

In the realm of consumer products, Google remains the most popular Internet service provider, thanks to applications like Google Search, YouTube, and Google Maps. Following Google are Facebook, Apple, TikTok, and Amazon.

An area of growing interest is Elon Musk's Starlink satellite Internet service, which nearly doubled its traffic in 2024. In the US market alone, Starlink saw a 2.5-fold increase, and in Brazil, an impressive 17-fold growth.

Although a doubling in traffic does not necessarily equate to a doubling in user numbers, the data indicates a growing popularity of satellite Internet and a rapid increase in traffic accessing the Internet via satellites.

Other notable data:

• Google's main crawler, Googlebot, generated the most request traffic to Cloudflare, indexing content from millions of Cloudflare-hosted websites.
• Traffic from ByteDance's crawler, Bytespider, gradually declined in 2024.
• Traffic for Anthropic's AI crawler, Claudebot, grew steadily until April, peaking in May and June before beginning to decline.
• Nearly 50% of global web requests used the HTTP/2 protocol, while about 20.5% used HTTP/3.
• React, PHP, and jQuery are the most popular technologies for website development, with HubSpot, Google, and WordPress being the most favored support services and platforms.
• In terms of IPv6 adoption: 28.5% of global requests were made using IPv6, with India and Malaysia having the highest adoption rates, at 68.9% and 59.6% respectively.
• Cloudflare noted that 99% of emails from domains with the .bar, .rest, and .uno suffixes were spam or malicious.

Cloudflare's report is available at: https://blog.cloudflare.com/radar-2024-year-in-review/