Apple iPhone takes the lead as No. 1 mobile browser in US, No. 2 in UK
By Will Park on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 11:31 PM PST In Announcements, Apple, Research, iPhone
Browsing the web on the iPhone is a dream. The experience is unrivaled by any other mobile browsing platform. So, it’s no wonder that the iPhone’s Safari browser has already climbed to the No. 1 spot among mobile browsers in the US. What makes it so great? Sure, there’s multi-touch, capacitance touchscreen, Safari, and tabbed browsing – but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as they say.
Ireland-based StatCounter tracks over 9 billion page-loads over 2 million websites each month, and they’ve released the latest results of all that web-spying. It turns out that, not even a year after the iPhone’s initial launch, the iPhone Safari browser holds a 0.18% market share in the US – making the iPhone the No. 1 mobile browser. Combined with the iPod Touch (which runs the same Safari browser), Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s touchy-feely duo accounts for 0.23% of the web browser market. That’s a 64% increase since December. In comparison, Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s market share registered around 0.01% in the US.
Now, UK browser-share is a different story. The iPhone takes the No. 2 spot with 0.06% of the mobile browser market, behind No. 1 Nokia’s 0.15%. But, combined with the iPod Touch, the Mobile Safari browser accounts for 0.10% of the UK browser market, considerably closing the gap to the top spot. In comparison, RIM’s BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) accounted for just 0.02% while Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) garnered 0.01% of the UK market.
In short, Apple’s iPhone is the No. 1 mobile browser in the US and No. 2 in the UK. All with just a single handset that hasn’t even been on market for a year. In a year’s time, and hopefully with the addition of the 3G iPhone and perhaps an iPhone Nano, it should be interesting to see how much browser market share Apple’s handsets can take. A broader device portfolio should help appeal to an ever greater market – except the haters, that is.
[Via: AppleInsider]
“Browsing the web on the iPhone is a dream. The experience is unrivaled by any other mobile browsing platform. So, it’s no wonder that the iPhone’s Safari browser has already climbed to the No. 1 spot among mobile browsers in the US. What makes it so great? Sure, there’s multi-touch, capacitance touchscreen, Safari, and tabbed browsing – but the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, as they say.”
Download a file with the browser.
You are the only thing keeping me from buying an iPhone.
Yeah, yeah, and the iPhone comes with unlimited data – and you wonder why it’s used a lot for browsing?? Ship every N95 with an unlimited data plan (mind you, it’d then COST a lot more) and you’d see 10 or 100x the data use.
Such ’swooning’ iphone biased reporting does intomobile’s reputation no good. Perhaps Will should report on Nokia stories exclusively for a week and Stefan apple!
a very biased report considering the iphone is sold with an unlimited data option by the networks involved. Other phone users hands are tied behind their backs due to the rip-off data network charges.
Hmm. Iphone’s Safari is the number one mobile browser by market share, yet we are told that it only accounts for less than one fifth of one percent (.18%). Somebody’s been munching some brownies because mobile Safari has closer to 66% of the mobile browser market.
Think about how fragmented the market would have to be such that the number one browser has a fraction of one percent of the market! It just doesn’t make sense.