Is StatCounter Legit? [ask the readers]

So I’m flipping through my WMPU feed — I can only read there, not participate, as Surur would prefer I didn’t comment, but I’m still a big fan nonetheless (1, 2) — and I see he did a bit on a flattering WinPho market share chart. One thing Surur and I have in common, in contrast to, say, the ability to comment on the other guy’s articles (and it would delight me if he’d take advantage of that more frequently), is that we dig phone stats. Surur was quite fond of the Facebook app scraping Google Doc (1, 2) and so was I. Too damn bad Facebook pulled the plug on enough of the data feed to make the thing useful.

So I see Surur fired up an embedded chart in his recent Nokia Lumia 800 Still Topping the Charts in Finland bit, pulls data from StatCounter. Now I’m not going to get into whether or not this marginally flattering set of data was cherrypicked (except when I pit his Finland data against the world or any other individual country), I’m just interested in where this data comes from exactly, how the StatCounter people gather it, how do they make their money, what shortcomings might there be in its methods, basically is the data somewhat legit. My interest is in StatCounter here, not trashing WP, though I am indeed happy to see it start to get a smidgen of traction in Finland. Maybe London too — tell you what, I’ll post the embedded chart code of London without looking at the data, okay? Fair?

Now of course the WMPU commenters love StatCounter, having seen this chart Surur used that suggests, suggests that Android and Apple’s rise and hold on the Finish market has been dampened somewhat by WinPho, meanwhile Nokia’s fall has apparently been cushioned noticeably by WinPho. Good bit, relatively speaking, you should read it.

Returning to my question, is StatCounter legit? Anything better than StatCounter? Please don’t say “official” reports of sales figures from Microsoft because they are fairly nonexistent, focus more on their legal pursuits than WinPho, … is StatCounter legit and what else is there? I like SocialNuggets too, but I don’t know if they’ve got this embedded trick I can do with StatCounter. If you want to see WinPho doing what Elop planned it to, Surur already scooped that. But here are a few more charts. Curious if this works with our theme, I’m not seeing it in my preview thing.

Worldwide right now:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Mobile OS Market Share

Doug Simmons

Update: So, the embedded thing worked. Wonder what it looks like on the mobile theme. And what about that WinPho Weave Mobilizer thing a lot of you guys use.