Apple.com is the World’s eighth Most Popular Web Property

Research firm comScore today issued a new survey of the world’s top web properties. Apple.com, which comScore ranked the world’s eleventh most-popular web site last year, climbed to the #8 slot, reflecting the growing popularity of Apple gadgets in the post-Jobs era. Matter of fact the Apple.com web site recorded a 54 percent increase in the number of hits compared to last year.

That’s a significant difference versus a 38 percent average gain for the top 100 measured web properties and the largest increase in the top ten rankings. It should be noted that the web analytics company now finally includes both hits from desktop as well as mobile devices. Go past the fold for the full breakdown…

By comparison, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft sites lead the top three with sixteen, thirteen and six percent gain, respectively, followed by Facebook (up twenty percent) and Amazon sites (up 27 percent).

comScore’s numbers are platform agnostic. Mobile hits include all smartphone and tablet platforms and desktop includes audience reached via video.

The average property within the Top 100 increased its audience size by an average of 38 percent, and 19 of those properties had incremental mobile audiences that extended the reach of their desktop audiences by at least 50 percent, comScore noted.

Here are the full top 50 rankings.

As you can see, the properties with the greatest incremental percentage gains from mobile were Groupon (223 percent), Zynga (211 percent) and Pandora (183 percent).

comScore claims its new MMX Multi-Platform offers “unduplicated accounting of audience size and demographics” across the desktop, smartphone and tablet platforms, one which reflects today’s multi-platform digital media environment.

We’re always taking any kind of survey or research with a healthy dose of skepticism and so should you. Still, this particular survey highlights key trends and the fact that Apple’s web site is climbing in rankings ahead of, say, CBS is notable in and of itself.

Marissa Mayer is leaving Google for its major competitor Yahoo!

Marissa Mayer is leaving Google for its major competitor.

One of the top players at the top search engine on the planet, Mayer was named chief executive of Yahoo today, instantly bumping her way up on the corporate America food chain and making her possibly the most prominent woman in Silicon Valley.

She had been listed as employee number-20 at Google.

An engineer by trade, Mayer was considered responsible for many of Google’s best-known features, from its simple homepage design to Gmail to Google News and Images.

Her appointment as the President of Yahoo is considered a significant get for a company trying to compete with Google and Facebook. She begins her new gig tomorrow.

Referring to Yahoo as “one of the best brands on the Internet,” Mayer showed appreciation for her time at Google but told The New York Times in an interview: “It was a reasonably easy decision.”

Here’s why Apple’s quarter is not only record shattering – it’s Historic !

Apple Smashes Expectations and is now the Top Smartphone Manufacturer in the World– the company ended up selling 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads eliciting comments as “numbers so big that they almost seem like they should be typos.”

That’s not just a record-breaking quarter – it’s a historic one, we need to put in the perspective of not only the industry but the global market to really see how successful Apple was.
Here’s the breakdown of the facts:

 – Apple’s $13 billion profits surpassed Google’s entire revenue of $10.6 billion. Actually, Apple’s profits for the year exceed Google’s revenue for the year as well.

– Apple’s $13 billion profits actually equaled Apple’s own revenue in Q4 2010. Which was only 15 months ago.

– Apple’s quarter is the second strongest in US history, the fourth strongest globally. It’s on that list with 18 other companies. You might notice all of the rest are oil and gas companies.

– Apple’s market cap makes its worth more than whole countries like Greece.

– Apple’s cash reserves now stand at $97.6 billion – which is more than all companies except for the biggest 52.

– Apple’s margins are staggering. While Walmart made nearly double the revenue, Apple had four times the profits.

– Apple’s gross margin for the quarter was 44.7% – so big, it got CFO Peter Oppenheimer stunned impressed and he’s been working at Apple for 15 years. 

– iPhone sales double with every new model: 

* In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. 

* In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. 

* In 2011, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined.

– Apple probably outdid Samsung in smartphone sales. With 37 million iPhones, Apple is way ahead of the 35 million Samsung smartphone sales guess. 

– Apple is also now back to being the world’s biggest smartphone maker.

– Apple sold more iPads than HP sold personal computers – 15.4 million iPads versus 14.7 million HP computers (Gartner’s estimate)

– The iPad market is now larger than the whole desktop PC market.

– iTunes alone brought 50% more revenue than Yahoo.

Clearly, this was a quarter that will be remembered. Apple is offering a lower guidance for the next quarter for a couple of reasons, but obviously the company is still growing. Could it outdo itself and surpise everyone again in the next quarters? Where it all of this headed for Apple? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

source: Daring Fireball, TechCrunch, @jlgolson