It looks like the mighty iPhone has been felled by one of the best mobile browsers on the market. New stats from the aptly-named research firm StatCounter confirms that the iPhone is no longer king of the mobile-browser-hill. With a 24.6% share of the global mobile browser market, Opera Mobile has overtaken the iPhone as the world’s top mobile browser. The iPhone, by contrast, managed to pull in just 22.3% of the worldwide market. Nokia’s Symbian browsers trail in third place with 17.9% of the world’s mobile browser share.
“Opera began the year in number one slot but iPhone overtook it in February. May saw Opera regain the number one position,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of StatCounter. “It will be fascinating to watch how this battle plays out over the year.”
Indeed, it should be exciting to see how the Palm Pre’s WebOS, Apple’s new iPhone and the bevy of smartphones running Opera Mobile will compete for market share this year. Of course, there’s also competition from the somewhat handicapped BlackBerry web browsers, which claims fourth place after Nokia’s Symbian browsers, but BlackBerry’s 6.9% global market share reflects its awkwardly slow mobile browser.