Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS dominates worldwide mobile Web traffic, and its influence is growing, according to the latest stats from Net Applications.
The company's data showed that iOS snagged a 65.3 percent share of mobile Web traffic during June, rising from 52.4 percent one year earlier. Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system expanded its share of mobile Web traffic over the past year, reaching nearly 20 percent last month, up from just over 14 percent in June 2011.
However, other top OSes are struggling to compete with iOS and Android. Rounding out the June 2012 mobile Web traffic shares were JaveME with 10.22 percent, Research in Motion's (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry with 1.9 percent, Nokia's (NYSE:NOK) Symbian with 1.5 percent and other OS platforms, including Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows platform, with a combined total share of 1.4 percent, according to Net Applications.
RIM's increasingly diminutive Web market share is one factor in its rapidly declining clout, which has mobile operators pushing it to reduce the fees it charges for subscriber access to its BlackBerry server architecture. The fees generate $4.09 billion in annual revenue for RIM, according to a Bloomberg article, which noted Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu has forecast that expected revenue from the fees will plummet to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2014 and $2.3 billion in fiscal 2015.
Examining results by device, Apple's iPad topped Net Application's rankings with a 36.7 percent market share of Web traffic in June, while the iPhone garnered a 26.9 percent market share. Android 2.3 devices nabbed about a 12 percent share. Devices using other versions of Android were found lower down on the market-share list, which covered products using 24 mobile OSes. Amazon's Kindle Fire ranked fourteenth on the list with 0.47 percent market share.
A CNET article noted that reports from other research firms often show Android leading iOS in mobile Web traffic share, which perhaps reflects how the different companies gather their data.
According to Net Applications, it collects data from the browsers of site visitors to its exclusive on-demand network of HitsLink Analytics and SharePost clients, which includes more than 40,000 websites across the globe. Net Applications counts unique visitors, and only records one unique visit to each network site per day. "This is part of our quality control process to prevent fraud, and ensure the most accurate portrayal of Internet usage market share. The data is compiled from approximately 160 million unique visits per month," said Net Applications.
Sister publication FierceMobileContent recently reported on data from comScore, which showed that growth of Google's Android operating system is flatlining. Android-based devices represented 50.9 percent of all smartphones nationwide in May 2012, up from 50.8 percent in April but still down from a high of 51 percent in March. Android's stasis coincides with a recent upswing for Apple's iOS, which now powers 31.9 percent of all smartphones in the U.S., up from 31.4 percent in April 2012 and an increase from 30.7 percent in March.
For more:
- see this Net Applications webpage
- see this CNET article
- see this Bloomberg article
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