go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing

How the iPhone Could End Up In Second Place

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5504622/how-the-iphone-could-end-up-in-second-place

Here are the US mobile web traffic figures for iPhone OS and Android, getting ready to collide: Android, on its way up; iPhone, on its way down. So when will Android overtake the iPhone? Try next month.

AdMob’s Mobile Metrics Report sees a predictable continuation of what we’d seen before from the ad tracking firm—specifically, that Android is on a serious tear, thanks in no small part to the massive success of the Droid. But before, the iPhone seemed unassailable. Now, it’s about to get trumped by Google’s OS, on terms it defined. In the US, that is. The rest of the world’s still warming to Android.

Modern smartphones are as much browsing devices as they are phones, so while mobile traffic isn’t the best way to measure total sales for a device, it’s a solid way to measure a device’s success, both in terms of how many people are using it, and how it’s getting used. The iPhone is a browsing device. So is the Pre. So are all the Android phones. But Windows Phones? BlackBerrys? Symbian devices? As popular as some of these are, they’re obviously not being used as smartphones.

The other key piece here, and one that’s not obvious from looking at the chart, is total browsing: It’s up. Way up. 193% up, in just one year. So when I talk about the iPhone falling to second place, I’m not declaring a loser—just a platform that’s winning more slowly. (Note: AdMob was recently, and generously, acquired by Google, though their advertising solutions are still cross-platform.) [Ars Technica]

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