Sam Oliver
StatCounter on Wednesday released new data that shows BlackBerry ahead of the iPhone for the first time ever. RIM's BlackBerry OS had a 34.3 percent Web browsing share in November, slightly ahead of Apple's 33 percent.
The Web analytics company also revealed that Google's Android continues to grow in share. A year ago, it had an 8.2 percent total share, while this year that grew to 23.8 percent.
In the same period, Apple's iOS has seen its Web browsing share tracked by StatCounter drop from 51.9 percent to 33 percent. The data is based on 15 billion page views per month, collected from more than 3 million websites.
The company said that based on current trends, BlackBerry and Android combined will double iOS in terms of Internet usage in the next year.
"These figures suggest that developers should not be developing solely for the iPhone to the exclusion of BlackBerry and Android," said StatCounter Chief Executive Aodhan Cullen.
It's a different story globally, though, where Nokia's Symbian mobile operating system has a 31.9 percent share. Apple's iOS is in second with 21.9 percent, and BlackBerry is in third with 19.3 percent. Google Android takes fourth with 11.6 percent, according to StatCounter.
In 2008, StatCounter revealed that the iPhone's Mobile Safari had quickly become the top mobile browser in the U.S. The Irish company said at the time that mobile browsing on the iPhone was three times greater than BlackBerry.
The latest figures are also very different from numbers released by the AdMob mobile advertising network in September 2009. That snapshot found iOS representing 40 percent of mobile browsing, while RIM's BlackBerry had shrunk to just 8 percent.
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114 Comments
My guess is iOS users are spending more time on apps than web browsing.. I know I do. Stuff I'm looking at are ones I could've used the web to look up but I'm using an app instead to get it (news, sports, fb, etc).
It's because of tiered data plans. Plain and simple.
the increase is in November. a huge number of business users are taking vacation... traveling or working from home.
but really... who cares?
I keep reading about how Nokia is dominant internationally, including here in the UK, but I just don't see it anymore. I used to see Nokias everywhere, but for the past few years it's been all Blackberrys and iPhones, with a rare Android sighting.
It's interesting though that Blackberry, which isn't really even a smart phone, is still so popular. Those things are everywhere here, and not just with men in suits, I see a lot of young women with them too.
nvm, removed post.