Filesharing Report Shows Explosive Growth for uTorrent
Written by Ernesto on April 26, 2008New data on the ever changing P2P landscape shows that the number of uTorrent users worldwide has more than doubled compared to last year. The BitTorrent client is most popular in Europe - with an install rate of 11.6% - and least popular in the United States, where 5.1% of the PCs have uTorrent installed.
The data presented here are based on a sample of over a million PCs (Windows only), and were gathered by PC Pitstop.
A few months we already reported that uTorrent overtook Azureus’ position as the most installed BitTorrent application, and this trend continues. LimeWire’s popularity on the other hand is declining worldwide. Nonetheless, it is still by far the most installed filesharing application.
LimeWire going down, uTorrent on the rise
From December 2006 to December 2007 LimeWire lost approximately 25% of its user base. By the end of 2007, 17% of all PCs in the United States had LimeWire installed, compared to 23.3% last year. Similar drops occurred in Europe, Latin America, and the rest of the world. The most loyal LimeWire users come from Australia, where the install rate is 27%, only a slight decrease compared to the 30.4% in 2006.
The uTorrent user base on the other hand is rapidly growing. uTorrent installs more than doubled in nearly every part of the world in the last 12 months. The BitTorrent client is most popular in Europe (11.6%), as can be seen from the graph below.
As a result of uTorrent’s growth, other BitTorrent clients such as Azureus and BitComet are going downhill. Azureus and BitComet now have an average install rate of 1.4% and 1.7% respectively.
Regional Differences
The regional differences in popularity of p2p applications are also worth mentioning. The data show that uTorrent is far more popular in Europe (11.6%) than in the United States (5.1%). Limewire on the other hand is well-liked among Aussies (27.0%) and Canadians (27.2%), but has less followers in Latin America.
Emule is still very popular in Latin America, where 16% of the PCs have the application installed compared to only 1% in the United States and 3% in Europe.
Home vs. Business PCs
Unsurprisingly, P2P applications are more frequently installed on home computers versus PCs at the workplace. Nevertheless, almost one out of five PCs at work (18%) have at least one P2P application installed. For home computer this is little over 1 in three (36%)
P2P Market share 2008
We also compiled a pie chart of the market share of the different P2P applications as of January 1st 2008. Please note that the data is a bit skewed since most of the data comes from participants who were based in the United States. LimeWire is without a doubt the winner here.
Finally, we want to make it clear though that install rates do not equal usage. The fact that someone installed a P2P client does not mean that they actually use it.
Based on the amount of traffic that is generated by each P2P application, uTorrent would be the absolute winner.
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[quote comment="361676"]I personally use Deluge, although unstable in some parts[/quote]I tried Deluge but as you said it’s way too unstable! Under Ubuntu, my computer freezed or crashed many times because of it :-(
However, when Deluge will be stable I will definitely give it another try ;-)
the upward trend for utorrent will definitely continue as compared to limewire utorrent is very light on resources, and you definitely can do more with utorrent. torrents are some of the greatest things internet has to offer. limewire is great for downloading songs (not even whole albums) and maybe music videos. i haven’t been able to use it to download a movie, and i definitely don’t trust it enough to find me a virus-free program.
I have installed Utorrent, Limewire, Emule and Bearflix.
But only use emule rarely and Utorrent 24-7.
Undoubtly the best client ever.
BitTorrent and TV sets are alike, they’re both for dumbfucks. Freedom will always mean less security. If you’re a dumbfuck, by all means, stay away from Gnutella (LimeWire) and use the safer BitTorrent. If the dumbfucks, who are mostly leeching bitches anyway, disappear from Gnutella, the spam and malware will disappear, too. If the same dumbfucks stopped using e-mail, e-mail spam would like-wise vanish. Too bad human rights get in the way of the ultimate anti-spam solution, you goddamn dumbfucks.
This debate is only going on because y’all winfolks can’t use Transmission. Seriously the best client ever.
This is the thrid time recently I have read this flawed report, the real headiline should read [b]only those with problems on their machines or spyware had these applications installed[/b], thats the real headline that seems to have escaped Ernestos grasp.
A quick read of the reports metholodgy will confirm this.
If uTorrent is so much more popular than Azureus (which I use and much prefer), then why when I look at the clients used by the peers I am connected to, most of them are using Azureus?
Azureus has always worked for me but limewire isn’t even bittorent.
Strangely, the number of DHT nodes reported by uTorrent went down quite hard recently. I usually saw ~318 nodes and now it is just ~170. Is there something going on? My feeling tells me there might be coming after uTorrent users.
LimeWire has had support for BitTorrent for quite some time now. It certainly isn’t a great BitTorrent client but if you didn’t know that, you’ve been out-of-the-loop for quite some time and better STFU before someone notices your incompetence.
μTorrent is fast because it is written in C++, precompiled for Windows; Azureus is slow because it has to run in a JIT compiler, being compiled in real-time on the JVM.
Azureus would do well to write a “lightweight” version; I guarantee they could compete with μTorrent.
P.S. Just because you can use a torrent doesn’t make you leet… I bet you types are the same people who put windows and 20 lights in your computer and sign your forum posts with your gey computer specs lul lul lul
You forgot to add “on windows” to the end of just about every sentence. As you know more and more people are using Linux (especially ubuntu) and macs and combined probably equal 10 to 15% of p2p clients.
Ktorrent FTW!
The report should read “p2p client stats for windows using morons (is there another kind?) with spyware installed (do windows machines without spyware exist?).”
To all the utorrent fanyboys who think they are uberleet because they aren’t “14 yr old girls running limewire” just remember there’s a whole world of leetness you haven’t even heard of yet.
I use deluge and its has lots of features..intuitive,things r where it should be, a removable feature-set..and lots of counter-counter-measures capability..
I have transmission installed as default in my GNU/Linux distribution..
but deluge is the best and very low foot print..
I use “Free Download Manager” for torrents, and I find it faster than Utorrent or Azureus. Besides, it is able to accelerate http-ftp download. It is an all-in-one file trasfer application, and it is open-source.
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