iPhone accounts for nearly all handheld WiFi hotspot access in US!

Now here’s an interesting little factoid gleaned from a new research report from JiWire. It seems that, when it comes to connecting handheld mobile devices, cafe WiFi hostpots across the US serve darn near all of their wireless bits and bytes to the iPhone OS. The iPhone OS (which runs on the iPhone and iPod Touch) accounts for 97.6% of all handheld devices logged onto WiFi hotspots tracked by JiWire – 54.2% use the iPhone and 43.4% are using the iPod Touch.

Taking the iPod Touch out of the equation for a moment, it’s interesting to see just how far ahead of other devices the iPhone stands – more than half of all mobile devices using cafe WiFi are iPhones. The closest competing handset in terms of cafe WiFi hotspot market share is the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N95. In fact, the Sony PSP is the second most used handheld device at these WiFi hotspots.

One way to look at the data is that the iPhone makes web browsing so easy that users are more likely to hop on the information superhighway for a quick stint. It also helps that all iPhone users are given free access to WiFi hotspots at Starbucks and Barnes & Noble stores in the US.

Here’s our take: iPhone users love cafe WiFi hotspots.

[Via: GigaOm]