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’s touchy-feely duo accounts for 0.23% of the web browser market. That’s a 64% increase since December. In comparison, Nokia’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 accounted for just 0.02% while Sony Ericsson 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]