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Android gaining on Apple iOS in mobile web market share

Android's share of U.S. mobile web traffic climbed to 25% in August in its best one month gain since Nov. 2009.

Web statistics company Quantcast published the data, which tracked U.S. mobile web consumption in the month of August, on Friday. Android saw a 2% gain in mobile web market share while all other platforms lost share.

In an earlier post, Quantcast noted that it "does not include Apple's iPad in mobile web consumption analysis," although it did not specifically state whether the iPad's figures are excluded from the most recent data set. According to Net Applications, which includes the iPad in its figures, iOS is now the third most popular Web browsing platform globally.

Over the past year, Apple has lost ground to Google, losing 11% of the mobile web consumption market while Google picked up 17% more market share. iOS still maintains a significant lead with 56% of the market, more than twice that of Android, but current growth trends could cause problems for Apple in the near future. If Google can maintain another year of comparable growth, Android will be nearly neck-and-neck with iOS.

The mobile web race continues to be mostly between Google and Apple, as RIM's market share dipped from 10% to 9% last quarter and the combined market share of all other platforms hovered around 10%.

Google's multi-carrier, multi-manufacturer strategy seems to be working. During the second quarter of this year, shipments of Android-based smartphones outpaced iPhones for the first time.

Wall street analysts have warned that Apple may be nearing saturation on the AT&T network in the U.S. Shaw Wu with Kaufman Bros. suggests that a deal between Apple and Verizon could help the iPhone regain some lost market share. With its 93 million subscribers, Verizon could more than double Apple's potential iPhone customer base in the U.S.



348 Comments

postulant 17 Years · 1268 comments

Unless Apple licenses iOS, it has no chance of fending off Android. Android will be as ubiquitous as Windows and Apple will be at 6%, again.

vinitaboy 18 Years · 156 comments

"In an earlier post, Quantcast noted that it "does not include Apple's iPad in mobile web consumption analysis," although it did not specifically state whether the iPad's figures are excluded from the most recent data set."

And, how then, if I may ask, can these data be accepted AT ALL? No iPad searches included AT ALL? Why not exclude iPhones as well?

Just more FUD and drivel from the vanquished, IMHO.

wiggin 18 Years · 2265 comments

Quote:
Originally Posted by Postulant

Unless Apple licenses iOS, it has no chance of fending off Android. Android will be as ubiquitous as Windows and Apple will be at 6%, again.

They don't need to license iOS. That would be pointless because the whole point is optimizing the hardware/software combination. There's no way Apple would optimize the software for another manufacturer's hardware. So all you would have is a bunch of crap devices running iOS subpar and taking sales away from Apple. Stupid.

What they need to do is get iPhone on other carriers. ATT only represents about 1/3 of the US mobile market. That gives Android a 3-to-1 addressable customer base advantage over iPhone. That an imbalance Apple needs to fix if they want to compete with Android on a level playing field in the US.

lewysblackmore 15 Years · 351 comments

Really. Now I know the haterz will roll down shortly, but c'mon. The market can support more than one platform, and the first out of the gate (so to speak) is the one that everyone looks at and compares to. The question is, is Android taking market away from iOS or latent market and from other platforms? Postulant has 6% been bad for Apple?

This is a growth market, there's still a lot of elbow room and they haven't really tapped its potential. And does it always have to be about Microsoft? Why go there? All other mobile web platforms dropped as Android climbed. Since Android ships on as many as 20-30 different models of smartphones, how can that not have an impact?

Are you saying that Apple has proven that they didn't learn ANYTHING from all those years of product marketing and development? Or are you just grabbing easy handles in lieu of a deeper look at what is actually going on (can't really fault you for doing that btw, cuz a lot of pundits and "experts" do the <for them> lazy-ass thing and don't bother to get down into what's going on)?

Or perhaps you are right. Apple has learned nothing over the years and are roundly condemned to squander all their advantages in a wide and growing market, just like they did before. 30 years ago. Because no company (like GE for example) can sustain continued success for an extended period of time without abjectly failing.