The truth about Android is that, despite its ubiquity in smartphones, it is not being used by many people as a browsing platform. This is a discovery reaffirmed NetMarketShare, an internet analytics company, when measuring hits to its clients websites over a year-long period. The company claims to cover approximately 160 million pageviews per month across multiple industries and topics, and it shows iOS has a commanding lead over Android in mobile browsing.
Between the period of June 2011 and May 2012, iOS-based Mobile Safari grew from 54% to 63% marketshare, while Android (encompassing all browsers, both native and third-party) rose from 14% to 19% in the same period. While it may be a little bit more difficult to ascertain exactly how many Android users are using mobile browsers because many third-party clients can mimic desktop equivalents, but NetMarketShare claims it factors that into its tallies. The 19% allotment refers to just the default Android Browser which comes standard on all handsets regardless of manufacturer. Browsers like Firefox, Chrome for Android and Opera make up less than 1% of the remaining Android share.
The numbers also combine smartphone and tablet share into one percentage, and as we told you previously the iPad owns almost the entire tablet market, with a 95% usage share across the industry. We’d reckon that the numbers would be quite a bit higher for Android if they eliminated tablets from the tally, but that information is not available. Still, it speaks to the culture of iOS and how much more comfortable it is for the average user to pick up and browse.
Source: NetMarketShare
Via: Forbes
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