characterization of web browser usage on smartphones

Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx

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Computers in Human Behavior

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate /comphumbeh

Characterization of web browser usage on smartphones

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.0540747-5632/� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Please cite this article in press as: Fazal-e-Amin, .zz Characterization of web browser usage on smartphones. Computers in Human Behavior (2014),dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.054

Fazal-e-AminDepartment of Software Engineering, College of Computer and Information Sciences, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Available online xxxx

Keywords:SmartphoneWeb browserUsage pattern

a b s t r a c t

The increased use of smartphones has established a trend of web browsing through smartphone brows-ers. On one hand many of the smartphone web browsers are available and on the other hand many of thewebsites are customized for mobile browsing. This paper presents the results of a study conducted toreveal the usage patterns of smartphones web browsers. Mix methods of research are used in this study.It is initiated with a qualitative part to lay down the basis for further investigations and concluded with aquantitative part. The results revealed about some of the insights on smartphone web browser usage pat-terns, which are equally helpful for the industry and academia. The findings are presented in followingcategories: number of usage sessions per day, duration of sessions, common tasks performed, and fre-quently used browser features. Furthermore, usage patterns associated to these categories are identifiedand analyzed in context of age and experience groups. The findings suggest that respondents from 35 to44 years of age tend to use smartphone web browsers for less number of times in a day but have longersessions. However, there is no significant difference in use of browser feature among different age groups.

� 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

The advancement in communication technologies has reshapedthe idea of mobile phone. Mobile phones are transformed intosmart phones and their capabilities are enhanced far beyond thelevel of a phone (Reynolds, 2008). The number of smart phoneusers can be estimated from the number of smart phone shipmentsin 2012. According to Canalyse, 694.8 million units of smart phoneswere produced in 2012 (Canalyse, 2013). Another figure of smartphone shipments in 2012 quoted by IDC, is 722.4 million units(IDC, 2013). Smart Phone market is continuously progressing.These figures are representative of the popularity and acceptanceof smart phones in the masses. There is no doubt that thispopularity and acceptance is due to the unique features providedby smart phones.

Among others, one of the unique features of smart phone is webbrowser with fairly improved capabilities (Reynolds, 2008). Itsusefulness and popularity can be estimated from the statisticspresented by comScore (2011), that in Japan, US and Europe peoplespend 55.4%, 36.4% and 28.8% of time (out of total phone usagetime) by using mobile browsers. The growing trend of browsingthrough smart phone browsers attracted the interest of softwaredeveloper community, and now dozens of commercial and opensource browsers are available in market.

Web browsing using smartphones has become one of the mostcommon use among the use of other applications. Figures showthat web browsing using mobiles phones has increased from9.58% to 25% in last two years (StatCounter, 2013). This increasingtrend can be credited to several factors such as better supportinginfrastructure and services e.g. Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, etc. and availabilityof sophisticated smartphones and web browsers with fairlyimproved capabilities (Reynolds, 2008). Different companiesshipped around 1 billion mobile phones in 2013 and 55.1% of themwere smartphones (IDC, 2014). Experts forecasted that the growthof smartphone market will progress and would reach 1095 millionin 2016 (Portio, 2013). Smartphone has revolutionized the idea ofweb browsing with its web browsers. Smartphone browsers arenot only used for information seeking tasks but for other purposesalso such as shopping. It is reported in ‘‘Smartphones Leading toGreater Transparency in the Shopping Experience’’ (2011), thatover 70% of iPhone owners use applications or web browsers whileshopping in store and 41% make purchases directly from theirphone. These trends compelled many researchers to work onsmartphone related issues. Several studies have been conductedon usability and usage of smartphone. In this paper, the usagepattern related to smartphone web browsers are identified withrespect to different age and experience groups. The results of thisstudy will help to better understand the usage of smartphonebrowsers and will help the practitioners to improve browsers forbetter usability.

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The paper is organized as follows: related works are discussedin Section 2. Research methods and information about therespondents are presented in Section 3. Findings of the study arepresented in Section 4 and discussed in Section 5.

2. Related works

The usage of smartphone has been discussed in many studies.These studies include those where the usage of smartphone is dis-cussed including its entire features and in some studies specificapplications were focused. A few of notable works are presentedhere. A survey was conducted in Bomhold (2013), with undergrad-uate students to know use of smartphone applications. The resultsof this study show that using search engine is the most frequenttask performed by the users. Another study (Lin, Zhang, Jung, &Kim, 2013), was conducted to know the extent wireless communi-cation has affected the traditional wired means. A survey was con-ducted; involving youth between 12 to 17 years of age in five EastAsian cities. The authors have identified three main categories ofmobile internet usage namely; task based activities, informationseeking and communication activities, and recreational activities.The study concluded that teens tend to use their mobile internetfor recreational and entertainment purposes. The social mediapractices of smartphone users were outlined in Malinen andOjala (2012). Qualitative research method; interview was usedand 30 owners of smartphone were interviewed. The results of thisstudy suggest that users of mobile social networking applicationsmostly check the news and latest updates while on the move. Sec-ondly, it was observed that there were more browsing activities onmobile phones than content creation.

The security of smartphone browsers is discussed in Mylonas,Tsalis, and Gritzalis (2013), from the view point of availabilityand manageability of security controls. Analysis of security controlis conducted and recommendations are provided. A study on thetrends of smartphone usage was conducted in Osman, ZawawiTalib, Sanusi, Yen, and Alwi (2011) focusing Malaysian market formobile content and applications. The results were based on a sur-vey conducted in different cities. The results show that 23.26% ofthe population used smartphones daily to brows web pages,18.38% used a few times weekly and 11.10% used weekly to browsweb pages. The lessons learned from a four month field study arepresented in Rahmati and Lin (2013), which include applicationusage and usage characteristics of 14 participants (novice teenageusers). The results show that the participants used the smart-phones in highly mobile fashion and usage was location depen-dent. Other results include session length, usage length, andnumber of sessions per hour. It took five to six weeks for partici-pants’ usage to stabilize.

A study (Shirazi, Henze, Dingler, Kunze, & Schmidt, 2013) wasconducted to investigate that how smartphone applications, inparticular web browsers are used. The data about the posture ofdevice show that phones were moved more while messaging andusing navigation applications. In case of browser and other applica-tions less movements were observed. Regarding the use of multi-ple browsers, 31% of the participants used more than onebrowser. The participants tend to use browser for a longer periodof time when open it through system launcher rather opening itthrough other applications. High rate of switching between appli-cations and browser is observed during the study. The averagelength of session was 2.36 min and when started through anotherapplication it was 1.52 min.

A Delphi method study was conducted in Dunn, Galletta,Hypolite, Puri, and Raghuwanshi (2013) by engaging the Smart-phone users and potential users. Three task lists are presented asthe result of the study; one for smart phone users, all users, and

Please cite this article in press as: Fazal-e-Amin, .zz Characterization of web brdx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.054

non-users of smart phones. Following four tasks were part of thetask list of smart phone users; check email, send email, internetsearch, browse internet. These tasks are related to the use ofbrowsers. Although the research presented in this paper is similarinto this study as both of the studies aim to identify user task.However, the methodology and scope differs, in this paper qualita-tive method; interview is used to identify the tasks. Furthermore,the scope of our study is limited to the smart phone users and par-ticularly the users of smart phone browsers.

A study (Oulasvirta, Rattenbury, Ma, & Raita, 2012) on smart-phone users habits concluded that brief usage sessions comprisea large part of smartphone usage. While comparing smartphoneand laptop it was found that smartphone use is significantly shortin duration. It was also found that the smartphone use habits aretightly associated with particular context.

In one of our previous work (Fazal-e-Amin and Alghamdi,2014), a usability evaluation model is presented to evaluate theusability of web browser. This model presents the attributes andsub attributes of usability in three layers. Usability tests were con-ducted with participants on four android web browsers. Theresults show consistency in case of three browsers.

The empirical patterns associated with the mobile internetusage were identified in Tossell, Kortum, Rahmati, Shepard, andZhong (2012). There were 24 participants of 19.2 years averageage in this study. The average number of browsing sessions perday was 3.86% and 50% of the users used browser for less thanthree times a day. Most of the browsing sessions (85%) were forsearching and google.com was used for this purpose. Our researchwork is more close to (Dunn et al., 2013; Shirazi et al., 2013; Tossellet al., 2012), and the results are comparable and complement thesestudies. Details are presented in discussions section.

3. Research methodology

This research was deemed to outline the characterization ofweb browser usage on smartphones. Mixed methods of researchare applied in this research; both qualitative and quantitativemethods were used. A through literature review was conductedthat revealed that this phenomenon was not discussed earlier, solimited knowledge was available regarding the usage patterns ofsmartphone web browser usage. The study was commenced withqualitative method i.e. interviews to explore the phenomenonand to form the basis of the qualitative method i.e. survey. In firstphase of the study seven in-depth interviews were conducted withexpert smartphone web users. The results were produced usingcontent analysis approach (Krippendorff, 2004), details are pre-sented in next sections. Here, the experts are defined as, thoseusers who are using smart phone browsers almost every day formore than a year’s time. They were engaged for a structuredinterview and were asked open ended questions about their webbrowser usage.

Frequently used browser feature, common tasks, number of ses-sions, and session duration were identified. This information wasanalyzed and survey instrument was prepared. After furnishingthe task list, tasks were categorized as basic and advanced tasks.These tasks and other information such as number of browser’ssessions per day and duration of session, common tasks performedwere used to prepare a survey. The survey population was 630respondents, contacted through social media, online survey andin-person meetings. Although, five age groups were created butsignificant number of respondents were from 3 age groups i.e. 18to 24, 25 to 34, and 35 to 44. Rest of the age groups were discardedand not discussed further in this paper. Majority of respondents(more than 60%) were from 25 to 34 years. Similarly, six experi-ence categories were created and majority of respondents were

owser usage on smartphones. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://



010203040506070

18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Age groups of respondents

Fig. 1. Population age groups and percentages.

15

20

25

30

spon

dent

s (%

)

Fazal-e-Amin / Computers in Human Behavior xxx (2014) xxx–xxx 3

having experience of 2 years (21%), 3 years (24%) and more than4 years (25%).

3.1. Respondents’ profiles

Seven interviews were conducted with different respondents.All of the respondents were experienced in using Smartphonebrowser. Table 1 summarizes the profiles of the respondents theirexperience of using Smartphone browser experience and browserthey used of using. Regarding the population of survey, a total of630 individuals participated in survey. The number of people indifferent age and experience groups is presented in Figs. 1 and 2.Majority of respondents were male (65%). Respondents weredivided in four age groups and six experience groups. Experiencecategories were sought to cover all users, as the rise of smartphonestarted from 2010 so these groups can accommodate all of them(those who started using smartphones in 2010 or earlier and thosewho started using recently and all of them in between).

0

5

10

Less than 1

1 2 3 4 More than 4

No.

of r

e

Experience (years)

Fig. 2. Experience of respondents (years) and percentages.

0

10

20

30

40

1 to 3 4 to 6 7 to 10 10+

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Browser usage per day (�mes)

Fig. 3. Browser usages per day and response percentages.

0

10

20

30

40

1 to 5 5 to 10 10 to 15 More than 15

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Dura�on of usage session

Fig. 4. Duration of one usage session and response percentages.

4. Results

4.1. Frequently used browser features

The results of qualitative method are presented in this section(see figs. 3–16). The tasks performed on Smartphone web browsersare divided in two categories; basic and advanced. The basic tasksare presented in Table 2, further divided into six categories. Theseare the task which are more common and performed frequentlywhile using a Smartphone web browser. The second category oftasks are advanced tasks presented in Table 3. These are the tasks,which are not used frequently and require more skills/experienceto perform for example setting preferences for credentials ordownload management, etc.

4.2. Survey results

4.2.1. Usage per dayRegarding the usage per day, results show that most of the

respondents use smartphone web browser for 1–3 times (36%)and more than ten times a day (37.5%).

4.2.2. Session durationRegarding the duration of each browsing session, most of the

respondents have a session from 1 to 5 min (33%) and 5 to10 min (30%).

4.2.3. Common tasksThe most common task performed using a smartphone browser

is searching/using search engine, majority of the respondents (80%)use their browsers for this purpose. The other tasks performed byrespondents are sending/receiving email (66%), reading news(55%), using social network sites (50%), and opening links receivedthrough SMS, email, etc. (47%).

Table 1Profiles of respondents.

Respondent ID Experience (Years) Browser (using/used) Age

Resp-1 2 Chrome, Default android 22Resp-2 2 Safari 24Resp-3 3 Safari, Chrome 23Resp-4 4 Firefox, Chrome 35Resp-5 1 Default android 41Resp-6 2 Dolphin, Chrome, Opera 38Resp-7 3 Default android, Chrome 20


4.2.4. Browser featuresIn this section results of the usage of browser features are pre-

sented according to their categories. Those categories in whichnone of the feature received 40% responses from the users wereconsidered less significant and not presented here.

In tab operation category, majority of respondents use theopening a tab feature (69%), the other features closing a tab andswitching between tabs is frequently used by 52% and 40% of thepopulation respectively.

Page scrolling as most frequently used feature is selected by69% of the respondents, whereas the other features zoom in, zoomout, and full screen mode were selected by 45%, 42%, and 30% of therespondents respectively.




0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Searching / Search Engine

Email News Social Network

Open links

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Common tasks performed

Fig. 5. Common tasks performed using web browser and response percentages.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

Opening a tab Closing a tab Switching between tabs

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Tab Opera�ons

Fig. 6. Frequently used browser feature (tab operations).

01020304050607080

Full screen

mode

Zoom in Zoom out Page

scrolling

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

View Opera�ons

Fig. 7. Frequently used browser feature (view operations).

0

10

20

30

40

50

Downloading files Downloading pdf Downloaded items

management

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Download Opera�ons

Fig. 8. Frequently used browser feature (download operations).

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

Moving forward Moving backward

Refreshing page

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Fig. 9. Frequently used browser feature (page operations).

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Sharing Page with other

applica�ons

Copying text Copying picture

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Fig. 10. Frequently used browser feature (information extraction operations).

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

18-24 25-34 35-44

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Age group

1 to 3 �mes

4 to 6 �mes

7 to 10 �mes

More than 10 �mes

Fig. 11. Browser usages per day w.r.t. age groups.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

< 1 1 2 3 4 > 4

NO

. OF

RESP

ON

DEN

TS (%

)

EXPERIENCE (YEARS)

1 to 3 �mes

4 to 6 �mes

7 to 10 �mes

More than 10 �mes

Fig. 12. Browser usages per day w.r.t. experience groups.


Please cite this article in press as: Fazal-e-Amin, .zz Characterization of web browser usage on smartphones. Computers in Human Behavior (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.054



0 5

10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

18-24 25-34 35-44

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Age group

1 to 5 minutes

6 to 10 minutes

11 to 15 minutes

More than 15 minutes

Fig. 13. Duration of browser session w.r.t. age groups.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

< 1 1 2 3 4 > 4

No.

of r

espo

nden

ts (%

)

Experience groups (years)

1 to 5 minutes

6 to 10 minutes

11 to 15 minutes

More than 15 minutes

Fig. 14. Duration of browser session w.r.t. experience groups.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

18-24 25-34 35-44

NO

. OF

RESP

ON

DEN

TS (%

)

AGE GROUP


Email

News

Social Network

Open links

Fig. 15. Commonly performed tasks w.r.t. age groups.

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

100

< 1 1 2 3 4 > 4

NO

. OF

RESP

ON

DEN

TS (%

)

EXPERIENCE (YEARS)


Email

News

Social Network

Open links

Fig. 16. Commonly performed tasks w.r.t. experience groups.

Table 2Basic features performed on Smartphone browser.

Basic features

Tab operations Opening a tabClosing a tabSwitching between tabsOpening a page in new tab

Bookmark operations Creating a bookmark listOpening a page from bookmark listEditing bookmark list

Home Page operations Setting home pageChanging home page

View operations Full screen modeZoom inZoom outPage scrolling

Searching options Searching within page

Page operations Moving forwardMoving backwardRefreshing page

Table 3Advanced features performed on Smartphone browser.

Advanced features

Browsing options Private browsingIncognito tab

Alternate user input operations Voice command/inputGesture input

Information extraction operations Sharing Page with other applicationsCopying textCopying picture

Browsing history options View HistoryOpening page from history itemsDeleting history items

Download operations Downloading filesDownloading pdfDownloaded items management

Credentials options Saving credentialsDeleting credentialsViewing saved credentialsSetting save credentials options


Downloading pdf as the frequently used feature is selected by47% of the respondents. Other features in this category; download-ing files (audio, video, and images) and download management arefrequently used by 42% and 16% of the population.


In page operations category, moving backward is the most fre-quent feature used by 45% of respondents. Other features in thiscategory; moving forward and page refreshing were selected by42% and 45% of the respondents.

Copying text is the most frequently used feature used by 52% ofthe respondents. Copying pictures and page sharing features areselected by 33% and 11% respectively.

4.2.5. Browser usage per dayThe age wise grouping of the data regarding browser usage per

day revealed that most of the respondents of age 35–44 years usebrowser for 1–3 times in a day. While a less number of respondentsuse browser for 1–3 times a day from 25 to 34 years and 18 to24 years category.

The experience wise grouping of data revealed that experiencedusers tend to use for more than 10 times a day and novice userstend to use for 1–3 times a day mostly.

4.2.6. Duration of sessionThe data regarding the duration of session show that respon-

dents from 35 to 44 years of age tend to have long sessions ascompared to the other age groups.




Table 4Top five frequently used browser features w.r.t. age groups.

Age 1 2 3 4 5

18–24 Opening a tab (95%) Closing a tab (93%) Page scrolling (71%) Switching between tabs (67%) Opening a page from bookmarklist (64%)

25–34 Opening a tab (87%) Opening a page from bookmarklist (74%)

Closing a tab (73%) Switching between tabs (70%) Page scrolling (67%)

35–44 Closing a tab (98%) Opening a tab (86%) Page scrolling (85%) Changing home page (58%) Full screen mode (57%)

Table 5Top five frequently used browser features w.r.t. experience groups.

Experience 1 2 3 4 5

Less than 1 year Opening a tab (99%) Opening a page frombookmark list (98%)

Closing a tab (81%) Moving forward (80%) Zoom out (61%)

1 year Closing a tab (99%) Opening a tab (97%) Opening a page frombookmark list (59%)

Full screen mode (55%) Downloading pdf (54%)

2 years Closing a tab (88%) Moving forward (74%) Opening a tab (73%) Opening a page frombookmark list (71%)

Page scrolling (63%)

3 years Full screen mode (99%) Searching within page (98%) Closing a tab (88%) Opening a tab (87%) Page scrolling (86%)4 years Closing a tab (99%) Opening a page from

bookmark list (67%)Opening a tab (62%) Full screen mode (61%) Opening page from history

items (59%)More than 4 years Page scrolling (88%) Closing a tab (78%) Full screen mode (77%) Opening a tab (66%) Zoom in (56%)


The duration of each usage session is increasing with the expe-rience. Experienced users tend to have longer browser usage ses-sions as compared to novice users.

The common tasks performed using browser were searching,sending/receiving emails, reading news, visiting social networkingsites and opening links as identified in qualitative phase. Thesurvey results revealed that searching is the most common taskperformed by respondents of all age groups. Respondents from35 to 44 years of age tend use browse more for sending and receiv-ing emails. Reading news using browser is equally popular in 18–24 and 25–34 years groups; however less number of people from35 to 44 years of age read news using browser. The trend of usingsocial network sites through browsers is more in 35–44 yearsgroups as compared to other groups.

The results of the correlation analysis show that tasks per-formed by the respondents from 18 to 23 years of age are stronglycorrelated (r = .934, p = .01) to the tasks performed by the respon-dents from 25 to 34 years of age. The tasks performed by therespondents from 35 to 44 years of age have weak positive corre-lation (r = .580, p = .03 and .344, p = .04) with the tasks performedby respondents from 18 to 24 and 24 to 34 years age categories.

The experience wise categorization of data related to the com-mon tasks performed using browser revealed that searching isthe most common among all experience categories. Sending andreceiving email as common task is selected by less respondentfrom higher experience groups. There is a significant trend of open-ing links through smartphone web browser in higher experiencecategories. The data show an increasing trend of reading newsthrough smartphone web browser with increase in experience.Respondents with more experience tend to use browser to readnews. The data about social networks is not consistent to makeconclusions.

4.2.7. Frequently used browser featuresThe top five frequently used browser features are represented in

Table 4 with respect to age of the respondents. It can be seen thatfour features i.e. opening a tab, closing a tab, page scrolling andswitching between tabs are the common in all age categories.However, two features changing home page and full screen modeare those which are not that popular in 18–24 and 25–34 yearsage categories.

The statistical analysis of the data revealed that the frequentlyused browser features are similar in all age groups.


The top five frequently used browser features with respect tothe experience are presented in Table 5.

The statistical analysis revealed that those having experience ofless than a year, their frequently used browser features arestrongly correlated (r = .710 and r = .732, p = .000) to those havingexperience of 1 and 2 years. They have weak correlation with thosehaving higher experience of 3, 4, or more than 4 years i.e. (r = .555,.551, .575, p = .000). Furthermore, respondents having experienceof 3, 4, more than 4 years, their frequently used browser featuresare strongly correlated i.e. (r = .801, .768, .765, p = .000).

5. Discussions

The smartphone web browser usage patterns are identified inthis study. The results include usage per day, duration of session,common tasks, and frequently used browser features. As men-tioned in the related works section that many studies have dis-cussed different aspects of smartphone usage. However, thisstudy is different from them as it only focuses the usage of webbrowsers. The results of this study complement the earlier studiessuch as (Bomhold, 2013), that searching is the most common taskperformed on smartphone web browsers. The use of smartphonebrowser is discussed in Shirazi et al. (2013), the results of thisstudy are comparable to it. The average length of a session was2.36 min in Shirazi et al. (2013), and in this study majority ofrespondents (33%) selected 1–5 min as their session duration.However, in this study the usage pattern related to different agegroups and experience groups are also identified. Patterns associ-ated to mobile internet usage were identified in Tossell et al.(2012), their results show that average number of sessions perday was 3.86 and 50% of the users used browsers for less than 3times a day. While our results show that 36% of respondents usebrowsers for 1–3 times a day and 37.5% respondents use for morethan 10 times a day. This increase is also representative of theincreased popularity of mobile web browsing.

The findings presented in this study should be generalized withcaution due to the limitations in this study. First of all, the samplesize of this study does not represent the whole range of smart-phone users, which is in millions. However, the sample size isequivalent or more than others studies. This study is not limitedto specific device or specific browser application because respon-dents had experience of using different devices and applications.





The PC studies related to use of web and browsers are not consid-ered in research. Future research may focus on the differences orsimilarities in PC and smartphone web browser usage.

6. Conclusion

In this paper, mix methods of research are employed to explorethe usage patterns of smartphone web browser. Respondents weredivided into categories with respect to age and experiences. Find-ings of this study include browser usage per day, duration of brow-ser session, common tasks performed using browser, andfrequently used browser features. Following conclusions are drawnfrom the findings: respondents from 35 to 44 years of age tend touse smartphone web browsers for less number of times in a daybut have longer sessions. While the respondents from other agegroups i.e. 18 to 24 and 25 to 35 tend to have more sessions ofshort durations. In terms of number and duration of usage sessionsthere is no significant difference in these two categories. Therespondents having more experience tend to use browser for moretimes a day and have longer sessions, while respondents with lessexperience use browser for less number of times a day and forshort duration per session. Regarding the frequently used browserfeatures, there is a pattern visible from data i.e. respondents can bedivided in two groups on the basis of their experience. Respon-dents having experience of less than one year, 1, and 2 years havesimilar pattern of using browser features and those having experi-ence of 3, 4 or more than 4 years have similar pattern. However,there was no difference in use of browser features among differentage groups. The work presented in this paper can also be used todevelop usability benchmark tasks for smartphone web browsers.

Acknowledgements

This research work is funded by the Research Center (RC) at Col-lege of Computer and Information Science, King Saud University.The authors are thankful to RC for their support.

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