Apple's iOS grabs 65% of mobile Web traffic
iOS continues to gain ground as the vehicle through which folks access the mobile Web, leaving Android with less than 20 percent, notes Net Applications.
Android is often considered king of the mobile world, but Apple's iOS actually accounts for the lion's share of the mobile Web traffic, at least according to the latest stats from Net Applications.
iOS continues to grow, capturing a global traffic tally of 65.3 percent in June, up from 52.4 percent a year ago. Though in second place, Android has also expanded and now holds a share of 19.7 percent as of last month, compared with 14.3 percent in June 2011.
Breaking down the results by device, the iPad was the leader in June with a 36.7 percent share, followed by the iPhone with 26.8 percent. Android 2.3 took third place, while other flavors of Android were scattered among the 24 mobile operating systems tracked in total.
The dominance of iOS and Android left little but scraps left for other mobile platforms. Java ME, typically installed on feature phones, grabbed the No. 3 spot with a 10.2 percent share. RIM's BlackBerry OS scooped out 1.9 percent of the market, while Nokia's Symbian snuck in a 1.5 percent share.
Collectively, Microsoft's Windows Phone and Windows Mobile took home less than three-quarters of a percentage point.
Reports from other research firms often show Android as the mobile leader over iOS. Why does Net Applications view iOS as the top dog? The answer lies in the way the data is gathered.
To compile its results, Net Applications collects data from the browsers of visitors -- in this case, the mobile traffic -- to its network of more than 40,000 Web sites -- so it's not measuring overall market share. Only the number of unique visitors are counted, and only one unique visit per site per day. In total, around 160 million unique visits per month are tallied in the results.